frankenstein sexology

The following workis a textual adaptation of a performancepiece originally presented at Rage Acrossthe Disciplines, an arts, humanities, andsocial sciences conference held June 10-12,1993 at California State University, SanMarcos. The interdisciplinary nature of theconference, its theme, and the organizerscall for both performances and academicpapers inspired me to be creative in mymode of presenting a topic then much onmy mind. As a member of Transgender Na-tion a militantly queer, direct actiontranssexual advocacy group I was at thetime involved in organizing a disruptionand protest at the American Psychiatric As-sociations 1993 annual meeting in SanFrancisco. A good deal of the discussion atour planning meetings concerned how toharness the intense emotions emanatingfrom transsexual experience especiallyrage and mobilize them into effective po-litical actions. I was intrigued by theprospect of critically examining this rage in

83

My Words to Victor Frankenstein

Above the Village ofChamounix

Performing Transgender Rage*

BY SUSAN STRYKER

ES SAY

a more academic setting through an idio-syncratic application of the concept of gen-der performativity. My idea was to performself-consciously a queer gender rather thansimply talk about it, thus embodying andenacting the concept simultaneously underdiscussion. I wanted the formal structure ofthe work to express a transgender aestheticby replicating our abrupt, often jarringtransitions between genders challenginggeneric classification with the forms of mywords, just as my transsexuality challengesthe conventions of legitimate gender andmy performance in the conference roomchallenged the boundaries of acceptableacademic discourse. During the perfor-mance, I stood at the podium wearing gen-derfuck drag-combat boots, threadbareLevi 501s over a black lace body suit, ashredded Transgender Nation T-shirt withthe neck and sleeves cut out, a pink trianglequartz crystal pendant, grunge metal jewel-ry, arid a six-inch long marlin hook dang-ling around my neck on a length of heavystainless steel chain. I decorated the set bydraping my black leather hiker jacket overmy chair at the panelists table. The jackethad handcuffs on the left shoulder, rainbowfreedom rings on the right side lacings, andQueer Nation-style stickers reading SEXCHANGE, DYKE, and FUCK YOURTRANSPHOBIA plastered on the back.

MONOLOGUEThe transsexual body is an unnatural body.It is the product of medical science. It is atechnological construction. It is flesh tornapart and sewn together again in a shapeother than that in which it was born. Inthese circumstances, I find a deep affinitybetween myself as a transsexual woman andthe monster in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein.Like the monster, I am too often perceivedas less than fully human due to the meansof my embodiment; like the monsters aswell, my exclusion from human communityfuels a deep and abiding rage in me that I,

like the monster, direct against the condi-tions in which I must struggle to exist.

I am not the first to link Frankensteinsmonster and the transsexual body. MaryDaly makes the connection explicit by dis-cussing transsexuality in Boundary Viola-tion and the Frankenstein Phenomenon,in which she characterizes transsexuals asthe agents of a necrophilic invasion offemale space (69-72). Janice Raymond,who acknowledges Daly as a formative in-fluence, is less direct when she says thatthe problem of transsexuality would bestbe served by morally mandating it out ofexistence, but in this statement she never-theless echoes Victor Frankensteins feel-ings toward the monster: Begone, vile in-sect, or rather, stay, that I may trample youto dust. You reproach me with your crea-tion (Raymond 178, Shelley 95). It is acommonplace of literary criticism to notethat Frankensteins monster is his owndark, romantic double, the alien Other heconstructs and upon which he projects allhe cannot accept in himself; indeed,Frankenstein calls the monster my ownvampire, my own spirit set loose from thegrave (Shelley 74). Might I suggest thatDaly, Raymond and others of their ilk simi-larly construct the transsexual as their ownparticular golem?1

The attribution of monstrosity remains apalpable characteristic of most lesbian andgay representations of transsexuality, dis-playing in unnerving detail the anxious,fearful underside of the current culturalfascination with transgenderism.2 Becausetranssexuality more than any other trans-gender practice or identity represents theprospect of destabilizing the foundationalpresupposition of fixed genders uponwhich a politics of personal identity de-pends, people who have invested their aspi-rations for social justice in identitarianmovements say things about us out of sheerpanic that, if said of other minorities,would see print only in the most hate-rid-dled, white supremacist, Christian fascist

KVINDER, KN & FORSKNING NR. 3-4 201184

rags. To quote extensively from one letterto the editor of a popular San Franciscogay/lesbian periodical:

I consider transsexualism to be a fraud, andthe participants in it perverted. The trans-sexual [claims] he/she needs to change his/her body in order to be his/her true self.Because this true self requires anotherphysical form in which to manifest itself, itmust therefore war with nature. One cannotchange ones gender. What occurs is a clever-ly manipulated exterior: what has been doneis mutation. What exists beneath the de-formed surface is the same person who wasthere prior to the deformity. People whobreak or deform their bodies [act] out thesick farce of a deluded, patriarchal approachto nature, alienated from true being.

Referring by name to one particular per-son, self-identified as a transsexual lesbian,whom she had heard speak in a public fo-rum at the San Francisco Womens Build-ing, the letter-writer went on to say:

When an estrogenated man with breasts lovesa woman, that is not lesbianism, that is muti-lated perversion. [This individual] is not athreat to the lesbian community, he is an out-rage to us. He is not a lesbian, he is a mutantman, a self-made freak, a deformity, an insult.He deserves a slap in the face. After that, hedeserves to have his body and mind madewell again.3

When such beings as these tell me I warwith nature, I find no more reason tomourn my opposition to them or to theorder they claim to represent thanFrankensteins monster felt in its enmity tothe human race. I do not fall from thegrace of their company I roar gleefullyaway from it like a Harley-straddling, dildo-packing leatherdyke from hell.

The stigmatization fostered by this sortof pejorative labelling is not without conse-quence. Such words have the power to de-

stroy transsexual lives. On January 5, 1993,a 22-year-old pre-operative transsexualwoman from Seattles queer community,Filisa Vistima, wrote in her journal, I wishI was anatomically normal so I could goswimming. But no, Im a mutant,Frankensteins monster. Two months laterFilisa Vistima committed suicide. Whatdrove her to such despair was the exclusionshe experienced in Seattles queer com-munity, some members of which opposedFilisas participation because of her trans-sexuality even though she identified asand lived as a bisexual woman. The LesbianResource Center where she served as a vo-lunteer conducted a survey of its consti-tuency to determine whether it should stopoffering services to male-to-female trans-sexuals. Filisa did the data entry for tabulat-ing the survey results; she didnt have toimagine how people felt about her kind.The Seattle Bisexual Womens Network an-nounced that if it admitted transsexuals theSBWN would no longer be a womens or-ganization. Im sure, one member saidin reference to the inclusion of bisexualtranssexual women, the boys can take careof themselves. Filisa Vistima was not aboy, and she found it impossible to takecare of herself. Even in death she found nosupport from the community in which sheclaimed membership. Why didnt Filisacommit herself for psychiatric care? askeda columnist in the Seattle Gay News. Whydidnt Filisa demand her civil rights? Inthis case, not only did the angry villagershound their monster to the edge of town,they reproached her for being vulnerable tothe torches. Did Filisa Vistima commit sui-cide, or did the queer community of Seattlekill her?4

I want to lay claim to the dark power ofmy monstrous identity without using it as aweapon against others or being woundedby it myself. I will say this as bluntly as Iknow how: I am a transsexual, and there-fore I am a monster. Just as the wordsdyke, fag, queer, slut, and

MY WORDS TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN 85

whore have been reclaimed, respectively,by lesbians and gay men, by anti-assimila-tionist sexual minorities, by women whopursue erotic pleasure, and by sex industryworkers, words like creature, monster,and unnatural need to be reclaimed bythe transgendered. By embracing and ac-cepting them, even piling one on top of an-other, we may dispel their ability to harmus. A creature, after all, in the dominanttradition of Western European culture, isnothing other than a created being, a madething. The affront you humans take at be-ing called a creature results from thethreat the term poses to your status aslords of creation, beings elevated abovemere material existence. As in the case ofbeing called it, being called a creaturesuggests the lack or loss of a superior per-sonhood. I find no shame, however, in ac-knowledging my egalitarian relationshipwith non-human material Being; every-thing emerges from the same matrix of pos-sibilities. Monster is derived from theLatin noun monstrum, divine portent, it-self formed on the root of the verb monere,to warn. It came to refer to living thingsof anomalous shape or structure, or to fab-ulous creatures like the sphinx who werecomposed of strikingly incongruous parts,because the ancients considered the appear-ance of such beings to be a sign of someimpending supernatural event. Monsters,like angels, functioned as messengers andheralds of the extraordinary. They served toannounce impending revelation, saying, ineffect, Pay attention; something of pro-found importance is happening.

Hearken unto me, fellow creatures. Iwho have dwelt in a form unmatched withmy desire, I whose flesh has become an as-semblage of incongruous anatomical parts,I who achieve the similitude of a naturalbody only through an unnatural process, Ioffer you this warning: the Nature you be-devil me with is a lie. Do not trust it toprotect you from what I represent, for it isa fabrication that cloaks the groundlessness

of the privilege you seek to maintain foryourself at my expense. You are as con-structed as me; the same anarchic wombhas birthed us both. I call upon you to in-vestigate your nature as I have been com-pelled to confront mine. I challenge you torisk abjection and flourish as well as have I.Heed my words, and you may well discoverthe seams and sutures in yourself.

CRITICISMIn answer to the question he poses in thetitle of his recent essay, What is a Mon-ster? (According to Frankenstein), PeterBrooks suggests that, whatever else a mon-ster might be, it may also be that whicheludes gender definition (229). Brooksreads Mary Shelleys story of an overreach-ing scientist and his troublesome creationas an early dissent from the nineteenth-cen-tury realist literary tradition, which had notyet attained dominance as a narrative form.He understands Frankenstein to unfoldtextually through a narrative strategy gen-erated by tension between a visually orient-ed epistemology, on the one hand, and an-other approach to knowing the truth ofbodies that privileges verbal linguisticality,on the other (199-200). Knowing by see-ing and knowing by speaking/hearing aregendered, respectively, as masculine andfeminine in the critical framework withinwhich Brooks operates. Considered in thiscontext, Shelleys text is informed by andcritiques from a womans point of view the contemporary reordering of knowledgebrought about by the increasingly com-pelling truth claims of Enlightenmentscience. The monster problematizes gen-der partly through its failure as a viablesubject in the visual field; though referredto as he, it thus offers a feminine, andpotentially feminist, resistance to definitionby a phallicized scopophilia. The monsteraccomplishes this resistance by masteringlanguage in order to claim a position asa speaking subject and enact verbally the


very subjectivity denied it in the specularrealm.5

Transsexual monstrosity, however, alongwith its affect, transgender rage, can neverclaim quite so secure a means of resistancebecause of the inability of language to re-present the transgendered subjects move-ment over time between stably genderedpositions in a linguistic structure. Our situ-ation effectively reverses the one encoun-tered by Frankensteins monster. Unlikethe monster, we often successfully cite thecultures visual norms of gendered embodi-ment. This citation becomes a subversiveresistance when, through a provisional useof language, we verbally declare the unnat-uralness of our claim to the subject posi-tions we nevertheless occupy.6

The prospect of a monster with a life andwill of its own is a principal source of hor-ror for Frankenstein. The scientist has tak-en up his project with a specific goal inmind nothing less than the intent to sub-ject nature completely to his power. Hefinds a means to accomplish his desiresthrough modern science, whose devotees,it seems to him, have acquired new and al-most unlimited powers; they can commandthe thunders of heaven, mimic the earth-quake, and even mock the invisible worldwith its shadows. ... More, far more, will Iachieve, thought Frankenstein. I will pio-neer a new way, explore unknown powers,and unfold to the world the deepest mys-teries of creation (Shelley 47). The fruitof his efforts is not, however, whatFrankenstein anticipated. The rapture heexpected to experience at the awakening ofhis creature turned immediately to dread.I saw the dull yellow eyes of the creatureopen. His jaws opened, and he mutteredsome inarticulate sounds, while a grinwrinkled his cheeks. He might have spo-ken, but I did not hear; one hand wasstretched out, seemingly to detain me, butI escaped (Shelley 56, 57). The monsterescapes, too, and parts company with itsmaker for a number of years. In the inter-

im, it learns something of its situation inthe world, and rather than bless its creator,the monster curses him. The very success ofMary Shelleys scientist in his self-appoint-ed task thus paradoxically proves its futility:rather than demonstrate Frankensteinspower over materiality, the newly enlivenedbody of the creature attests to its makersfailure to attain the mastery he sought.Frankenstein cannot control the mind andfeelings of the monster he makes. It ex-ceeds and refutes his purposes.

My own experience as a transsexual par-allels the monsters in this regard. Theconsciousness shaped by the transsexualbody is no more the creation of the sciencethat refigures its flesh than the monstersmind is the creation of Frankenstein. Theagenda that produced hormonal and surgi-cal sex reassignment techniques is no lesspretentious, and no more noble, thanFrankensteins. Heroic doctors still endeav-or to triumph over nature. The scientificdiscourse that produced sex reassignmenttechniques is inseparable from the pursuitof immortality through the perfection ofthe body, the fantasy of total masterythrough the transcendence of an absolutelimit, and the hubristic desire to create lifeitself.7 Its genealogy emerges from a meta-physical quest older than modern science,and its cultural politics are aligned with adeeply conservative attempt to stabilizegendered identity in service of the natural-ized heterosexual order.

None of this, however, precludes med-ically constructed transsexual bodies frombeing viable sites of subjectivity. Nor doesit guarantee the compliance of subjects thusembodied with the agenda that resulted ina transsexual means of embodiment. As werise up from the operating tables of our re-birth, we transsexuals are something more,and something other, than the creaturesour makers intended us to be. Thoughmedical techniques for sex reassignment arecapable of crafting bodies that satisfy the vi-sual and morphological criteria that gener-


ate naturalness as their effect, engagingwith those very techniques produces a sub-jective experience that belies the naturalisticeffect biomedical technology can achieve.Transsexual embodiment, like the embodi-ment of the monster, places its subject inan unassimilable, antagonistic, queer rela-tionship to a Nature in which it must ne-vertheless exist.

Frankensteins monster articulates its un-natural situation within the natural worldwith far more sophistication in Shelleysnovel than might be expected by those fa-miliar only with the version played by BorisKarloff in James Whales classic films fromthe 1930s. Film critic Vito Russo suggeststhat Whales interpretation of the monsterwas influenced by the fact that the directorwas a closeted gay man at the time he madehis Frankenstein films. The pathos he im-parted to his monster derived from the ex-perience of his own hidden sexual identity.8Monstrous and unnatural in the eyes of theworld, but seeking only the love of his ownkind and the acceptance of human society,Whales creature externalizes and rendersvisible the nightmarish loneliness and alien-ation that the closet can breed. But this isnot the monster who speaks to me so po-tently of my own situation as an openlytranssexual being. I emulate instead MaryShelleys literary monster, who is quick-wit-ted, agile, strong, and eloquent.

In the novel, the creature flees Franken-steins laboratory and hides in the solitudeof the Alps, where, by stealthy observationof the people it happens to meet, it gradu-ally acquires a knowledge of language, liter-ature, and the conventions of European so-ciety. At first it knows little of its own con-dition. I had never yet seen a being resem-bling me, or who claimed any intercoursewith me, the monster notes. What didthis mean? Who was I? What was I?Whence did I come? What was my destina-tion? These questions continually recurred,but I was unable to solve them (Shelley116, 130). Then, in the pocket of the jack-

et it took as it fled the laboratory, the mon-ster finds Victor Frankensteins journal, andlearns the particulars of its creation. I sick-ened as I read, the monster says. Increaseof knowledge only discovered to me what awretched outcast I was (Shelley 124,125).

Upon learning its history and experienc-ing the rejection of all to whom it reachedout for companionship, the creatures lifetakes a dark turn. My feelings were thoseof rage and revenge, the monster declares.I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell withinme (130). It would have been happy todestroy all of Nature, but it settles, finally,on a more expedient plan to murder sys-tematically all those whom Victor Fran-kenstein loves. Once Frankenstein realizesthat his own abandoned creation is respon-sible for the deaths of those most dear tohim, he retreats in remorse to a mountainvillage above his native Geneva to ponderhis complicity in the crimes the monsterhas committed. While hiking on the gla-ciers in the shadow of Mont Blanc, abovethe village of Chamounix, Frankensteinspies a familiar figure approaching himacross the ice. Of course, it is the monster,who demands an audience with its maker.Frankenstein agrees, and the two retire to-gether to a mountaineers cabin. There, ina monologue that occupies nearly a quarterof the novel, the monster tells Frankensteinthe tale of its creation from its own point ofview, explaining to him how it became soenraged.

These are my words to Victor Franken-stein, above the village of Chamounix. Likethe monster, I could speak of my earliestmemories, and how I became aware of mydifference from everyone around me. I candescribe how I acquired a monstrous iden-tity by taking on the label transsexual toname parts of myself that I could not oth-erwise explain. I, too, have discovered thejournals of the men who made my body,and who have made the bodies of creatureslike me since the 1930s. I know in intimate


detail the history of this recent medical in-tervention into the enactment of transgen-dered subjectivity; science seeks to containand colonize the radical threat posed by aparticular transgender strategy of resistanceto the coerciveness of gender: physical al-teration of the genitals.9 I live daily withthe consequences of medicines definitionof my identity as an emotional disorder.Through the filter of this official patholo-gization, the sounds that come out of mymouth can be summarily dismissed as theconfused ranting of a diseased mind.

Like the monster, the longer I live inthese conditions, the more rage I harbor.Rage colors me as it presses in through thepores of my skin, soaking in until it be-comes the blood that courses through mybeating heart. It is a rage bred by the ne-cessity of existing in external circumstancesthat work against my survival. But there isyet another rage within.

JOURNAL (FEBRUARY 18, 1993)Kim sat between my spread legs, her backto me, her tailbone on the edge of thetable. Her left hand gripped my thigh sohard the bruises are still there a week later.Sweating and bellowing, she pushed onelast time and the baby finally came.Through my lovers back, against the skinof my own belly, I felt a child move out ofanother womans body and into the world.Strangers hands snatched it away to suc-tion the sticky green meconium from itsairways. Its a girl, somebody said. Paul,I think. Why, just then, did a jumble ofdark, unsolicited feelings emerge wordlesslyfrom some quiet back corner of my mind?This moment of miracles was not the timeto deal with them. I pushed them back,knowing they were too strong to avoid forlong.

After three days we were all exhausted,slightly disappointed that complicationshad forced us to go to Kaiser instead ofhaving the birth at home. I wonder what

the hospital staff thought of our little tribeswarming all over the delivery room:Stephanie, the midwife; Paul, the babys fa-ther; Kims sister Gwen; my son Wilsonand me; and the two other women whomake up our family, Anne and Heather.And of course Kim and the baby. Shenamed her Denali, after the mountain inAlaska. I dont think the medical folks hada clue as to how we all considered ourselvesto be related to each other. When the laborfirst began we all took turns shifting be-tween various supporting roles, but as theordeal progressed we settled into a morestable pattern. I found myself acting asbirth coach. Hour after hour, throughdozens of sets of contractions, I focusedeverything on Kim, helping her stay in con-trol of her emotions as she gave herself overto this inexorable process, holding on toher eyes with mine to keep the pain fromthrowing her out of her body, breathingevery breath with her, being a companion.I participated, step by increasingly intimatestep, in the ritual transformation of con-sciousness surrounding her daughtersbirth. Birth rituals work to prepare the selffor a profound opening, an opening as psy-chic as it is corporeal. Kims body broughtthis ritual process to a dramatic resolutionfor her, culminating in a visceral, catharticexperience. But my body left me hanging. Ihad gone on a journey to the point atwhich my companion had to go on alone,and I needed to finish my trip for myself.To conclude the birth ritual I had partici-pated in, I needed to move something inme as profound as a whole human life.

I floated home from the hospital, filledwith a vital energy that wouldnt discharge.I puttered about until I was alone: my exhad come over for Wilson; Kim and Denaliwere still at the hospital with Paul;Stephanie had gone, and everyone else wasout for a much-needed walk. Finally, in thesolitude of my home, I burst apart like awet paper bag and spilled the emotionalcontents of my life through the hands I


cupped like a sieve over my face. For days,as I had accompanied my partner on herjourney, I had been progressively openingmyself and preparing to let go of whateverwas deepest within. Now everything in meflowed out, moving up from inside and outthrough my throat, my mouth becausethese things could never pass between thelips of my cunt. I knew the darkness I hadglimpsed earlier would reemerge, but I hadvast oceans of feeling to experience beforethat came up again.

Simple joy in the presence of new lifecame bubbling out first, wave after wave ofit. I was so incredibly happy. I was so inlove with Kim, had so much admiration forher strength and courage. I felt pride andexcitement about the queer family we werebuilding with Wilson, Anne, Heather,Denali, and whatever babies would follow.Weve all tasted an exhilarating possibilityin communal living and these nurturing,bonded kinships for which we have no ade-quate names. We joke about pioneering ona reverse frontier: venturing into the heartof civilization itself to reclaim biological re-production from heterosexism and free itfor our own uses. Were fierce; in a worldof traditional family values, we need tobe.

Sometimes, though, I still mourn thepassing of old, more familiar ways. Itwasnt too long ago that my ex and I weremarried, woman and man. That love hadbeen genuine, and the grief over its lossreal. I had always wanted intimacy withwomen more than intimacy with men, andthat wanting had always felt queer to me.She needed it to appear straight. The shapeof my flesh was a barrier that estranged mefrom my desire. Like a body without amouth, I was starving in the midst of plen-ty. I would not let myself starve, even ifwhat it took to open myself for a deep con-nectedness cut off the deepest connectionsI actually had. So I abandoned one life andbuilt this new one. The fact that she and Ihave begun getting along again, after so

much strife between us, makes the bitter-ness of our separation somewhat sweet. Onthe day of the birth, this past loss was pre-sent even in its partial recovery; held up be-side the newfound fullness in my life, itevoked a poignant, hopeful sadness that in-undated me.

Frustration and anger soon welled up inabundance. In spite of all Id accomplished,my identity still felt so tenuous. Every cir-cumstance of life seemed to conspireagainst me in one vast, composite act of in-validation and erasure. In the body I wasborn with, I had been invisible as the per-son I considered myself to be; I had beeninvisible as a queer while the form of mybody made my desires look straight. Now,as a dyke I am invisible among women; as atranssexual, I am invisible among dykes. Asthe partner of a new mother, I am often in-visible as a transsexual, a woman, and a les-bian Ive lost track of the friends and ac-quaintances these past nine months whoveasked me if I was the father. It shows sodramatically how much they simply dontget what Im doing with my body. Thehigh price of whatever visible, intelligible,self-representation I have achieved makesthe continuing experience of invisibilitymaddeningly difficult to bear.

The collective assumptions of the natu-ralized order soon overwhelmed me. Na-ture exerts such a hegemonic oppression.Suddenly I felt lost and scared, lonely andconfused. How did that little Mormon boyfrom Oklahoma I used to be grow up to bea transsexual leatherdyke in San Franciscowith a Berkeley Ph.D.? Keeping my bear-ings on such a long and strange trip seemeda ludicrous proposition. Home was so fargone behind me it was gone forever, andthere was no place to rest. Battered byheavy emotions, a little dazed, I felt the in-ner walls that protect me dissolve to leaveme vulnerable to all that could harm me. Icried, and abandoned myself to abject de-spair over what gender had done to me.


Everythings fucked up beyond all recognition.This hurts too much to go on. I came as close to-day as Ill ever come to giving birth literally.My body cant do that; I cant even bleed with-out a wound, and yet I claim to be a woman.How? Why have I always felt that way? Imsuch a goddamned freak. I can never be awoman like other women, but I could never bea man. Maybe there really is no place for me inall creation. Im so tired of this ceaseless move-ment. I do war with nature. I am alienatedfrom Being. Im a self-mutilated deformity, apervert, a mutant, trapped in monstrous flesh.God, I never wanted to be trapped again. Ivedestroyed myself. Im falling into darkness, Iam falling apart.

I enter the realm of my dreams. I am under-water, swimming upwards. It is dark. I see ashimmering light above me. I break through theplane of the waters surface with my lungsbursting. I suck for air and find only morewater. My lungs are full of water. Inside andout I am surrounded by it. Why am I not deadif there is no difference between me and what Iam in? There is another surface above me and Iswim frantically towards it. I see a shimmeringlight. I break the plane of the waters surfaceover and over and over again. This water an-nihilates me. I cannot be, and yet an excruci-ating impossibility I am. I will do anythingnot to be here.

I will swim forever.I will die for eternity.I will learn to breathe water.I will become the water.If I cannot change my situation I willchange myself.

In this act of magical transformation I recognize myself again.

I am groundless and boundless movement. I am a furious flow.I am one with the darkness and the wet.

And I am enraged.

Here at last is the chaos I held at bay. Here at last is my strength.I am not the water I am the wave,and rageis the force that moves me.

Ragegives me back my body as its own fluid medium.

Ragepunches a hole in water around which I coalesceto allow the flow to come through me.

Rageconstitutes me in my primal form. It throws my head backpulls my lips back over my teeth opens my throatand rears me up to howl:: and no sounddilutesthe pure quality of my rage.

No soundexistsin this place without language my rage is a silent raving.

Ragethrows me back at lastinto this mundane realityin this transfigured fleshthat aligns me with the power of my Be-ing.

In birthing my rage,my rage has rebirthed me.

THEORYA formal disjunction seems particularly ap-propriate at this moment because the affectI seek to examine critically, what Ivetermed transgender rage, emerges fromthe interstices of discursive practices and at


the collapse of generic categories. The rageitself is generated by the subjects situationin a field governed by the unstable but in-dissoluble relationship between languageand materiality, a situation in which lan-guage organizes and brings into significa-tion matter that simultaneously eludes de-finitive representation and demands its ownperpetual rearticulation in symbolic terms.Within this dynamic field the subject mustconstantly police the boundary constructedby its own founding in order to maintainthe fictions of inside and outsideagainst a regime of signification/material-ization whose intrinsic instability producesthe rupture of subjective boundaries as oneof its regular features. The affect of rage asI seek to define it is located at the marginof subjectivity and the limit of signification.It originates in recognition of the fact thatthe outsideness of a materiality that per-petually violates the foreclosure of subjec-tive space within a symbolic order is alsonecessarily inside the subject as groundsfor the materialization of its body and theformation of its bodily ego.

This primary rage becomes specificallytransgender rage when the inability to fore-close the subject occurs through a failure tosatisfy norms of gendered embodiment.Transgender rage is the subjective experi-ence of being compelled to transgress whatJudith Butler has referred to as the highlygendered regulatory schemata that deter-mine the viability of bodies, of being com-pelled to enter a domain of abjected bod-ies, a field of deformation that in its unliv-ability encompasses and constitutes therealm of legitimate subjectivity (16). Trans-gender rage is a queer fury, an emotionalresponse to conditions in which it becomesimperative to take up, for the sake of onesown continued survival as a subject, a set ofpractices that precipitates ones exclusionfrom a naturalized order of existence thatseeks to maintain itself as the only possiblebasis for being a subject. However, by mo-bilizing gendered identities and rendering

them provisional, open to strategic devel-opment and occupation, this rage enablesthe establishment of subjects in newmodes, regulated by different codes of in-telligibility. Transgender rage furnishes ameans for disidentification with compulso-rily assigned subject positions. It makes thetransition from one gendered subject posi-tion to another possible by using the im-possibility of complete subjective foreclo-sure to organize an outside force as an in-side drive, and vice versa. Through the op-eration of rage, the stigma itself becomesthe source of transformative power.10

I want to stop and theorize at this partic-ular moment in the text because in thelived moment of being thrown back from astate of abjection in the aftermath of mylovers daughters birth, I immediately be-gan telling myself a story to explain my ex-perience. I started theorizing, using all theconceptual tools my education had put atmy disposal. Other true stories of thoseevents could undoubtedly be told, but up-on my return I knew for a fact what lit thefuse to my rage in the hospital deliveryroom. It was the non-consensuality of thebabys gendering. You see, I told myself,wiping snot off my face with a shirt sleeve,bodies are rendered meaningful onlythrough some culturally and historicallyspecific mode of grasping their physicalitythat transforms the flesh into a useful arti-fact. Gendering is the initial step in thistransformation, inseparable from theprocess of forming an identity by means ofwhich were fitted to a system of exchangein a heterosexual economy. Authority seizesupon specific material qualities of the flesh,particularly the genitals, as outward indica-tion of future reproductive potential, con-structs this flesh as a sign, and reads it toenculturate the body. Gender attribution iscompulsory; it codes and deploys our bod-ies in ways that materially affect us, yet wechoose neither our marks nor the meaningsthey carry.11 This was the act accomplishedbetween the beginning and the end of that


short sentence in the delivery room: Its agirl. This was the act that recalled all theanguish of my own struggles with gender.But this was also the act that enjoined mycomplicity in the non-consensual genderingof another. A gendering violence is thefounding condition of human subjectivity;having a gender is the tribal tattoo thatmakes ones personhood cognizable. Istood for a moment between the pains oftwo violations, the mark of gender and theunlivability of its absence. Could I saywhich one was worse? Or could I only saywhich one I felt could best be survived?

How can finding ones self prostrate andpowerless in the presence of the Law of theFather not produce an unutterable rage!What difference does it make if the fatherin this instance was a pierced, tatooed, pur-ple-haired punk fag anarchist who helpedhis dyke friend get pregnant? Phallogocen-tric language, not its particular speaker, isthe scalpel that defines our flesh. I defy thatLaw in my refusal to abide by its originaldecree of my gender. Though I cannot es-cape its power, I can move through itsmedium. Perhaps if I move furiouslyenough, I can deform it in my passing toleave a trace of my rage. I can embrace itwith a vengeance to rename myself, declaremy transsexuality, and gain access to themeans of my legible reinscription. ThoughI may not hold the stylus myself, I canmove beneath it for my own deep self-sus-taining pleasures.

To encounter the transsexual body, toapprehend a transgendered consciousnessarticulating itself, is to risk a revelation ofthe constructedness of the natural order.Confronting the implications of this con-structedness can summon up all the viola-tion, loss, and separation inflicted by thegendering process that sustains the illusionof naturalness. My transsexual body literal-izes this abstract violence. As the bearers ofthis disquieting news, we transsexuals oftensuffer for the pain of others, but we do notwillingly abide the rage of others directed

against us. And we do have something elseto say, if you will but listen to the monsters:the possibility of meaningful agency and ac-tion exists, even within fields of dominationthat bring about the universal cultural rapeof all flesh. Be forewarned, however, thattaking up this task will remake you in theprocess.

By speaking as a monster in my personalvoice, by using the dark, watery images ofRomanticism and lapsing occasionally intoits brooding cadences and grandiose pos-tures, I employ the same literary techniquesMary Shelley used to elicit sympathy forher scientists creation. Like that creature, Iassert my worth as a monster in spite of theconditions my monstrosity requires me toface, and redefine a life worth living. I haveasked the Miltonic questions Shelley posesin the epigraph of her novel: Did I requestthee, Maker, from my clay to mould meman? Did I solicit thee from darkness topromote me? With one voice, her monsterand I answer no without debasing our-selves, for we have done the hard work ofconstituting ourselves on our own terms,against the natural order. Though weforego the privilege of naturalness, we arenot deterred, for we ally ourselves insteadwith the chaos and blackness from whichNature itself spills forth.12

If this is your path, as it is mine, let meoffer whatever solace you may find in thismonstrous benediction: May you discoverthe enlivening power of darkness withinyourself. May it nourish your rage. Mayyour rage inform your actions, and your ac-tions transform you as you struggle totransform your world.

NOTES* Essayet er genoptrykt med tilladelse fra forfatte-ren og Duke University Press. Det blev frst trykt iGLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1994/1: 237-254. Senere er det bl.a. blevet optrykt iStryker, Susan og Whittle, Stephen (2006): The


Transgender Studies Reader. Routledge, New York:244-256. Teksten bringes her uden ndringerbortset fra enkelte ortografiske rettelser. (red.)

1. While this comment is intended as a monstersdisdainful dismissal, it nevertheless alludes to asubstantial debate on the status of transgenderpractices and identities in lesbian feminism. H. S.Hubin, in a sociology dissertation in progress atBrandeis University, argues that the pronounceddemographic upsurge in the female-to-male trans-sexual population during the 1970s and 1980s isdirectly related to the ascendancy within lesbian-ism of a cultural feminism that disparaged andmarginalized practices smacking of an unliberatedgender inversion model of homosexuality es-pecially the butch-femme roles associated withworking-class lesbian bar culture. Cultural femi-nism thus consolidated a lesbian-feminist alliancewith heterosexual feminism on a middle-class basisby capitulating to dominant ideologies of gender.The same suppression of transgender aspects oflesbian practice, I would add, simultaneouslyraised the spectre of male-to-female transsexuallesbians as a particular threat to the stability andpurity of nontranssexual lesbian-feminist identity.See Echols for the broader context of this debate,and Raymond for the most vehement example ofthe anti-transgender position.2. The current meaning of the term transgenderis a matter of some debate. The word was original-ly coined as a noun in the 1970s by people whoresisted categorization as either transvestites ortranssexuals, and who used the term to describetheir own identity. Unlike transsexuals but liketransvestites, transgenders do not seek surgical al-teration of their bodies but do habitually wearclothing that represents a gender other than theone to which they were assigned at birth. Unliketransvestites but like transsexuals, however, trans-genders alter the vestimentary coding of their gen-der only episodically or primarily for sexual gratifi-cation; rather, they consistently and publicly ex-press an ongoing commitment to their claimedgender identities through the same visual represen-tational strategies used by others to signify thatgender. The logic underlying this terminology re-flects the widespread tendency to construe gen-der as the socio-cultural manifestation of a mater-ial sex. Thus, while transsexuals express theiridentities through a physical change of embodi-ment, transgenders do so through a non-corporealchange in public gender expression that is never-theless more complex than a simple change ofclothes.

This essay uses transgender in a more recent sense, however, than its original one. That is, I useit here as an umbrella term that refers to all identi-ties or practices that cross over, cut across, movebetween, or otherwise queer socially constructedsex/gender boundaries. The term includes, but isnot limited to, transsexuality, heterosexual trans-vestism, gay drag, butch lesbianism, and such non-European identities as the Native American berd-ache or the Indian Hijra. Like queer, transgen-der may also be used as a verb or an adjective. Inthis essay, transsexuality is considered to be a cul-turally and historically specific transgender prac-tice/identity through which a transgendered sub-ject enters into a relationship with medical, psycho-therapeutic, and juridical institutions in order togain access to certain hormonal and surgical tech-nologies for enacting and embodying itself.3. Mikuteit 3-4, heavily edited for brevity and clar-ity.4. The preceding paragraph draws extensively on,and sometimes paraphrases, OHartigan andKahler.5. See Laqueur 1-7, for a brief discussion of theEnlightenments effect on constructions of gender.Feminist interpretations of Frankenstein to whichBrooks responds include Gilbert and Gubar, Jaco-bus, and Homans.6. Openly transsexual speech similarly subverts thelogic behind a remark by Bloom, 218,that a beautiful monster, or even a passable one,would not have been a monster.7. Billings and Urban, 269, document especiallywell the medical attitude toward transsexual sur-gery as one of technical mastery of the body;Irvine, 259, suggests how transsexuality fits intothe development of scientific sexology, thoughcaution is advised in uncritically accepting the in-terpretation of transsexual experience she presentsin this chapter. Meyer, in spite of some extremelytransphobic concluding comments, offers a goodaccount of the medicalization of transgender iden-tities; for a transsexual perspective on the scientificagenda behind sex reassignment techniques, seeStone, especially the section entitled All of realityin late capitalist culture lusts to become an imagefor its own security (280-304).8. Russo 49-50: Homosexual parallels in Fran-kenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)arose from a vision both films had of the monsteras an antisocial figure in the same way that gaypeople were things that should not have hap-pened. In both films the homosexuality of directorJames Whale may have been a force in the vision.9. In the absence of a reliable critical history of


transsexuality, it is best to turn to the standard medical accounts themselves: see especially Benja-min, Green and Money, and Stoller. For overviewsof cross-cultural variation in the institutionalizationof sex/gender, see Williams, Social Construtions/Essential Characters: A Cross-Cultural Viewpoint,252-76; Shapiro 262-68. For accounts of particu-lar institutionalizations of transgender practicesthat employ surgical alteration of the genitals, seeNanda; Roscoe. Adventurous readers curiousabout contemporary non-transsexual genital alter-ation practices may contact E.N.I.G.M.A. (EroticNeoprimitive International Genital ModificationAssociation), SASE to LaFarge-werks, 2329 N.Leavitt, Chicago, 1L 60647.10. See Butler, Introduction, 4 and passim.11. A substantial body of scholarship informs theseobservations: Gayle Rubin provides a productivestarting point for developing not only a politicaleconomy of sex, but of gendered subjectivity; ongender recruitment and attribution, see Kessler andMcKenna; on gender as a system of marks that na-turalizes sociological groups based on supposedlyshared material similarities, I have been influencedby some ideas on race in Guillaumin and by Wittig.12 Although I mean chaos here in its generalsense, it is interesting to speculate about the po-tential application of scientific chaos theory tomodel the emergence of stable structures of gen-dered identities out of the unstable matrix of ma-terial attributes, and on the production of prolifer-ating gender identities from a relatively simple setof gendering procedures.

LITERATURE Benjamin, Harry (1966): The Transsexual Phe-nomenon. Julian, New York. Billings, Dwight B., and Thomas Urban (1981):The Socio-Medical Construction of Transsexual-ism: An Interpretation and Critique, in: SocialProblems 1981/29: 266-82. Bloom, Harold (1965): Afterword, in: Franken-stein, or The Modern Prometheus. Signet/ NAL, New York: 212-23. Org.: Bloom, Harold (1965): Frankenstein, or The New Prometheus, in: Parti-san Review 1965/32: 611-18. Brooks, Peter (1993): Body Work: Objects of De-sire in Modern Narrative. Harvard UniversityPress, Cambridge, Massachussets. Butler, Judith (1993): Bodies That Matter: On theDiscursive Limits of Sex. Routledge, New York.

Daly, Mary (1989): Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethicsof Radical Feminism. Beacon, Boston. Echols, Alice (1989): Daring to Be Bad: RadicalFeminism in America, 1967-1975. University Pressof Minnesota, Minneapolis. Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar (1979):Hor-rors Twin: Mary Shelleys Monstrous Eve, in: TheMadwoman in the Attic. Yale University Press,New Haven: 213-47. Green, Kichard, and John Money (eds.) (1969):Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment. Johns Hop-kins University Press, Baltimore. Guillaumin, Colette (1988): Race and Nature:The System of Marks, in: Feminist Studies 1988/8:25-44. Homans, Margaret (1986): Bearing Demons:Frankensteins Circumvention of the Maternal, in:Bearing the Word. Chicago University Press,Chicago: 100-19. Irvine, Janice (1990): Disorders of Desire: Sex andGender in Modern American Sexology. Temple Uni-versity Press, Philadelphia. Jacobus, Mary (1986): Is There a Woman in thisText?, in: Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Cri-ticism. Columbia University Press, New York: 83-109. Kahler, Frederic (1993): Does Filisa Blame Seat-tle? Editorial in: Bay Times [Sail Francisco] 3 June,1993: 23. Kessler, Suzanne J., and Wendy McKenna(1985): Gender: An Ethnomethodological Ap-proach. University Press of Chicago, Chicago. Laqueur, Thomas (1990): Making Sex: Body andGenderfrom the Greeks to Freud. Harvard Universi-ty Press, Cambridge, MA. Meyer, Morris (1991): I Dream of Jeannie:Transsexual Striptease as Scientific Display, in: TheDrama Review 1991/35.1: 25-42. Mikuteit, Debbie (1986): Letter. Coming Up!Feb. 1986: 3-4. Nanda, Serena (1990): Neither Man Nor Woman:The Hijras of India. Wadsworth, Belmont, Cali-fornia. OHartigan, Margaret D. (1993): I Accuse, in:Bay Times [San Francisco] 20 May 1993: 11. Raymond, Janice G. (1979): The TranssexualEmpire: The Making of the She-Male. Beacon,Boston. Roscoe, Will (1994): Priests of the Goddess:Gender Transgression in the Ancient World,American Historical Association Meeting. 9 Janu-ary 1994, San Francisco. Rubin. Gayle (1975): The Traffic in Women:Notes on the Political Economy of Sex, in: Toward an Anthropology of Women. Ed. Rayna


K. Reiter. Monthly Review P, New York: 157-210. Riisso, Vito (1981): The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. Harper and Row, NewYork. Shapiro, Judith (1991): Transsexualism: Reflec-tions on the Persistence of Gender and the Muta-bility of Sex, in: Body Guards: The Cultural Politicsof Gender Ambiguity. Ed. Epstein, Julia, andStraub, Kristina. Routledge, New York: 248-79. Shelley, Mary (1965): Frankenstein, or The Mod-ern Prometheus. Org.: 1817. Signet/NAL, NewYork. Stoller, Robert (1968): Sex and Gender. Vol. 1.Science House, New York. Stoller, Robert (1975): The Transsexual Experi-ment. Vol. 2 of Sex and Gender. Hogarth, Lon-don.

Stone, Sandy (1991): The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto, in: Body Guards: TheCritical Politics of Gender Ambiguity. Epstein, Ju-lia, and Straub, Kristina Ceds.). Routledge, NewYork: 280-304. Williams, Walter (1986): The Spirit and the Flesh:Sexual Diversity in American lndian Culture. Bea-con, Boston. Wittig, Monique (1992): The Mark of Gender,in: The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Beacon,Boston: 70-89.

Susan StrykerAssociate Professor of Gender and Womens StudiesDirector of the Institute for LGBT StudiesUniversity of Arizona


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