AWAB ( Assigned Winged at Birth)

“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.

Haunted House

“He had the sensation that the corner of the sheet trembled between his fingers…suddenly entire patches of the white sheet broke away and turned into a rising haze of reluctant moths…the edges of their wings had locked together, linking them to form a heavy sheet that was slowly devouring the corpse underneath” (184).

This quote from Cereus Blooms at Night comes at a climactic moment in the story, when the dead and decaying body of Chandin Ramchandin is found by police in the basement of Mala’s home. Mootoo sets up Mala’s connection to bugs throughout the novel, printing them between paragraphs and sections and showing her love and care for them. The moths covering her father’s corpse are intentionally connected to Mala and her role as protector of the bugs, her sister, and her younger self. They represent her as well as being her friends. Their white color, aside from giving them resemblance to a sheet, could represent the purity of love she has for the insects which they in turn feel for her, and also the childhood innocence that was stolen by her father’s sexual abuse. That stolen innocence is now “slowly devouring” his dead body. In the same way that Mala is both protecting herself and being herself through her projection of Pohpoh, the moths are protecting Mala and representing Mala, stuck with her decaying father while keeping him out of sight and contained under their bodies until they are disrupted by the policeman and forced to abandon their post. Mootoo chooses to keep him preserved underneath the house in an unrealistic way to show how the entire house has been frozen in time, in a bubble isolated from the rest of the town which has moved on since his death, without thinking of Mala.

The fantastical preservation of her father’s corpse, staying recognizable and in continual decay after over 30 years or more is tied to Mala’s own paralysis. Her life has not progressed since the day she killed her father, stuck up on the hill isolated from the town with only the bugs as company. Physically she has not moved on, and mentally a part of her has detached and become a projection of her younger self, further mooring her to the past. The day that Oto disrupts her routine, the day the police come and find her father’s body, breaks the spell that has kept them both frozen in time in the house. Even the smell of his decaying body haunts the property and infects the air just as his rotten desires soured Mala’s childhood. She is still not free of him after all those years, until Oto, the policemen, and the fire break the boundary set between her home on the hill and the rest of the town. For the first time in her life, she is away from her father’s body, free from his rot that blackened his insides even prior to his death, a disgusting disease he projected onto his daughters through sexual abuse. After his body is burned or removed from the home, the cereus blooms sweetly, without masking the scent of decay, for a new generation of love.

 

Overpriced Hiking Gear

“I never once heard, ‘you made the right choice when you turned around’. The mountain just won’t let go” (Clare 10)

 

This excerpt from Eli Clare’s Exile and Pride refers to Clare’s central metaphor of the mountain, being a hierarchical incline all are pressured to trek and conquer. At its peak live the highest in society, the successful, as well as success itself. At the bottom reside the marginalized and oppressed, most relevantly to Clare including the queer and disabled, who are labeled as lazy should they fail the climb. An integral part of Clare’s metaphor is understanding that the climb is not created equal for all who push towards the top. Because of his experiences living as disabled, Clare’s writing on the mountain illuminates the differing struggles of accessibility and equity that face disadvantaged and scored members of the ‘bottom’ of society. His metaphor is backed by a personal anecdote of a physical climb he attempted with an able-bodied friend, having to turn around as the steep and jagged trail was drenched in rain and became unsafe and impossible to continue on. He recounts friends and family trying to encourage him by pushing him to try again, and in the quote above reflects that none of them validated his decision not to reach the top. Instead, conquering the mountain is always assumed to be the best possible outcome of the climb, even at the cost of comfort, safety, and stability. The quote extends beyond his real-life experience and to the subsequent metaphor of the mountain, as society advertises life at the top to be the highest quality life possible for everyone, never considering the possibility that stopping along the side, or even remaining at the bottom, is an equal option. Selling the dream of the mountaintop is all about control, serving to maintain not only heteronormativity, but also capitalism. Imagining a world where the mountain has let go, and a life at the top is no longer the exclusive land of dreams above the cloud, but instead regarded as equal to a life built along its side, or at its base. Perhaps in this world it is an even field, not a mountain. The mountain demands exclusivity, not only thanks to its rough journey but in its very shape, the pointed top having less than half the surface area available at the bottom, built to have a singular highest point occupied by no more than one at a time. In a field however, no one is above another. That threatens a heteronormative society. It is harder to look down on someone when you are not standing above them. Furthermore, without the desire to reach the top, those already there can no longer force others to make the climb. Status means nothing when it is not desired, and people content to stay along the side cannot be manipulated with the promise of a valueless reward. That threatens capitalism, a system fueled by competition and hierarchy. People will no longer follow any societal rules which promise to get them to the top, nor will they buy any product which promises to aid in the climb. Contentment is the enemy of both heteronormativity and capitalism, leaving them linked in their efforts to retain power, and that contentment starts when we can stop pushing each other to reach the top, reject its illusion of utopia, and together make the choice to turn back,

The Blame Game

“Adultery is as much about disillusionment as it is about sex. The charm didn’t work. You paid all that money, ate the cake and it didn’t work. It’s not your fault, is it?” (78).

 

This quote, from Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body, contains two of the central themes of the novel. Commitment, and responsibility. The meat of the quotation is spent discussing marriage, an institution built on commitment, and always tied to a breaking of that commitment in the narrator’s experience. As is clear from their description of “pay[ing] all the money, [eating] the cake” the narrator views marriage as only its traditional, shallow, commercial parts, with the use of “charm” implying a sort of magic ritual, an act towards the production or achievement of a fantastical goal.

Focusing more on the third sentence, the narrator lists these traditional, shallow planning choices as boxes to be checked off, putting the focus of marriage on its physical elements rather than emotional ones. The disillusionment comes when these physical aspects do not change the emotional ones. The last line of this quotation is the most important. Once resigned to disillusionment, the disappointment turns to blame. Twice in the quotation does the narrator reference the self directly, “you ate the cake, you spent that money” and “it’s not your fault, is it” However the self is absent when discussing “the charm” failing. Adultery is the inevitable result, the product of some failure beyond your control. To the narrator, responsibility is foreign, and this quote shows that. None of the failures have to be their fault if the magic of marriage independently failed. There is no internal problem to address, no personal flaw, because “the charm” just didn’t work.

The narrator has disconnected their awareness from their actions, living in a place of technical innocence, pondering the inner wound they feel and fill with partners they will never assume responsibility for. Keeping just far enough from these women that they don’t hold emotional weight, already committed to another, yet close enough that they will relieve the narrator’s loneliness on the most superficial level. And when the superficial no longer fills them the way it once did, they can comfort themselves saying, its not my fault.

However, Winterson doesn’t write this last sentence as a statement, but rather as a question. “Is it?”. While this question could be read as indignation, it could just as easily be read as a demonstration of the narrator’s inner conflict, and the start of their self-reflection. A genuine question, as well as an insecurity. They feel failed by commitment because they fail at commitment but cannot fathom themselves at fault. The problem must be institutional, their failure must be out of their control. During their discussion of fading feelings, they site a natural circadian clock of love, removing blame once again, however doubt is evident in their subconscious if nothing else. The question is sincere, and they are desperate for a reassuring answer despite all odds. They spend most of the novel discussing the emotional wreckage they leave behind, wondering why without stating the obvious common factor in all of it. It’s not their fault. Isn’t it?