“twelve percent of babies in the world are born with tails. Doctors suppress this news. They cut off the tail, so it won’t scare the parents. I wonder what percentage are born with wings?” (97).
In Judith Bulter’s Gender Trouble, she argues that sex, as well as gender, is performative. The labelling of genitalia on first glance is as socially constructed as the roles and expectations that it implies for the rest of the infant’s life. In the same vein of a male and female gender binary, then, is a penis and vulva sex binary, a simplified and constraining view of the many nuances and differences that exist within bodies. The quote above, from the Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, involves bodily differences in a unique way. The main character of the poetic novel, Geryon, is described as a red monster with wings, and in the relevant quote he has been told by a friendly stranger that “twelve percent of babies in the world are born with tails”.
Because of the fantastical elements of the novel, there is no one meaning to Geryon’s wings, nor the babies supposed tails, however both are a difference from the mainstream or acceptable body. This difference could be metaphorical, representing Geryon’s queerness or a disability, or could be literal, representing those born intersex. Of course, these interpretations are not mutually exclusive either. I will choose to read the rumored tails as intersex but leave Geryon’s wings as something unique entirely to him, representing a societal difference of any kind. In the quote, the friend tells Geryon that not only do “doctors suppress this news”, but they also perform surgery on the infants, without the consent or knowledge of the parents, so as to keep them calm about their child fitting into the bodily binary.
This practice is nearly identical to the treatment of babies born intersex, with non-necessary surgeries performed in order to create a more socially acceptable body, one which falls into the penis/vulva binary. The suppression of information is similar to the isolation of queer children, and people as a whole, who are kept ignorant of others like them and instead only shown representation of non queer or acceptable identities. If looked at as metaphorical, the tails could also represent the forceful conversion and suppression of queer identities into the social binary, their presence seen as frightening or threatening to the heterosexual ‘parents’ or larger culture. Growing up, the children may not realize that they were born with tails at all, preventing the tails from becoming normalized and keeping those attached to them in isolation. Those children who do not have their tails removed, if there are any, would never know that their friends, family, or coworkers are really just like them.
This is something Geryon wonders for himself at the end of the quote, switching from the friend’s narration to his inner thoughts. He wonders how many babies are born with wings, as he is the only one he is aware of. If the doctors are cutting off infants’ tails, it is plausible for Geryon to believe that perhaps they are also cutting off infant’s wings, leaving him isolated in the winged experience by force, even though in reality there should’ve been an entire community of winged people. Perhaps, that community has been stolen from him, their wings removed in a non-necessary procedure so that they could better align with the constructed bodily binary.
First of all, I really like this claim/idea and your title! I definitely thought about Geryon’s wings possibly being a symbol for disability, but I never thought of reading his identity as a “red-winged monster” being symbolic of the experience of an intersex person. You added a different layer to Geryon’s queerness besides him being gay that isn’t as apparent/obvious. I think a really interesting/key point you made is how queer bodies, like Geryon’s, “cut off,” so that they can fit into the bodily and social binary which increases their feelings of isolation. To add, at the end of the novel, Ancash breaks this bubble that Geryon lives in by telling him about the volcano and the “eyewitnesses” that have seen the inside of the volcano.