Tag: gender identity

Carnivals, Swimming Pools, and Elusive Trans Narratives

“[…] the portrait I had brought home from the carnival. Betsy didn’t know what my mother was talking about. Finally after much confusion, she asked, ‘Didn’t I draw your son?’ I remember the complete joy I felt when my mother came home with this story. I looked again and again at the portrait, thinking, ‘Right here, right now, I am a boy.’ It made me smile secretly for weeks, reach down into my pockets to squeeze a stone tight in each fist. I felt as if I were looking in a mirror and finally seeing myself, rather than some distorted fun-house image” (Clare 146). 

Clare’s writing in “stones in my pockets, stones in my heart” is undeniably full of emotion, but this was a particular spot of resonance, in my reading. His story of being perceived as a young boy has several connections to the rest of the chapter, notably the highlighted childhood question “Am I feminine?” (Clare 144). Clare also writes about his later discovery of the lesbian community, specifically the butch lesbian community. He states, “I knew I could be this kind of woman” and describes finding “a definition of woman large enough” to fit into (Clare 155). All these components build into the idea of being seen. The second part of this passage is principal—in it, Clare sees himself in his true form. The stone companions add to this imagery of growing up and finding safe spaces. Clare found several ways to move through the world as he grew with his gender identity.  

Segueing into a personal note, I felt seen by Clare’s story several times in this chapter. It is curious to me that I had similar experiences during similar developmental times. When I was roughly seven or eight, I went to a pool party which was being hosted by my mother’s associates—nobody’s children knew each other. I, with my choppy, chin-length hair and swim trunks, spent the whole afternoon with a group of boys my age. We played football, because that’s definitely a sport that’s meant to be played in the water. It wasn’t until my mom came to find me and called my then-name that I—and the boys—became wise to the misunderstanding. They’d thought I was a boy the entire time. I was giddy with the keen sense I’d pulled something off, even if it hadn’t been intentional. I immediately thought of this day when I read Clare’s carnival story. 

Then I was nine, eleven, thirteen. I was the class tomboy. I played sports. I did not date. I was ‘not like other girls.’ I, too, found “a definition of woman large enough” to house me until I hit high school, snapped, and came out. This makes me think about the transgender community in a broader sense. No two trans individuals are the same, and there is no universal experience, as emphasized by the other social factors Clare addresses. I advocate for celebrating everyone’s individual “definition of know and feel,” but I wonder if there are more common experiences I have yet to see (Clare 158). Trans narratives have entered the mainstream in the last decade or two, yet I am still taken aback upon feeling recognized. I wonder if trans representation feels tenuous because it is so contested.  

Queerness, Mangoes, and Streetlights

“You’re the Only One I Need” by Alejandro Heredia, an exploration of drag, queerness, femininity versus masculinity, gayness, is deeply rooted in its setting and qualities of setting. The physical setting of Santo Domingo is very central to the story, of course; but what I’m getting at is the more physical and visual qualities of the world that the characters interact with, and the importance of them to the story’s queerness. For example, the physicality, and almost bodily description, of eating a mango:

“[Fabio] claws for his [yellow] mango and tears into it with his teeth, makes a small hole in the flesh of the fruit. He massages the pulp into juice and sucks from the fruit every last drop of sun. When they are done, the skin of the mango is taut, wrinkled and saggy. Only the pit remains” (34).

The action of eating a mango is always very intimate in that way. It’s just that kind of fruit: the ripeness of it and the juice and the skin. But this description is long and detailed, every word deliberate, with so much language of touch and fleshiness. “He massages the pulp into juice and sucks from the fruit every last drop of sun” — massaging, very specific touch; pulp, the flesh of the fruit (34). They are eating the mango in a way that men perhaps are not “supposed” to do it. There is too much intimacy and enjoyment in it, too much touch and sweetness. This assumption is proved when “the girls laugh” (34), watching the boys eat this fruit in this perhaps “girly” or “gay” way. The mango is thus a symbol of their perceived femininity.

Once again I want to return to this sentence: “He massages the pulp into juice and sucks from the fruit every last drop of sun” (34), but now looking at the ending of it, “every last drop of sun.” If the mango is seen as a symbol for the perception of queerness or femininity to the outside world, then the light, the sun, that they are extracting from the mango can be read as a space and a moment of time when they can have a safe space for their queerness. That is, before the girls look at them and laugh.

Heredia plays with darkness and light, shadows and color all throughout the piece. When Ren and the two boys change into drag, they “turn to a dark alleyway, away from the light” — this is their private space, where they can be with themselves and their bodies. However, Ren then “continues the rest of his transformation before them, in the soft orange streetlight” (37). The description of light reminds me somehow of the mango: soft, orange or yellow, again light. The darkness may be their private space — but yellow, orange, soft flesh of the mango, the sun and the streetlight is the safe space for their queerness. Heredia’s work is thus thinking about queer spaces within a world where queerness is perhaps laughed at or hidden.

Sexuality and Gender in Cereus Blooms at Night

A few weeks ago, my mother and I had a conversation about the relationship between gender and sexuality. Specifically, she told me that the acronym LGBT confused her, and she didn’t understand why the T was included alongside the LGB. Why do we think of gender and sexuality as belonging under one umbrella? Why are straight trans people considered part of the same group as gay cis people? What connects them? This isn’t a question I’ve thought much about before, and I wasn’t sure how to answer her. I tend to consider gender and sexuality as inherently linked, in the way that a person’s sexuality relates to the gender(s) they’re attracted to, or how a person’s gender influences the way they define their sexuality. However, I think there is a deeper connection here than a simple reciprocal relationship, and I think Cereus Blooms at Night provides a good lens through which to explore this question. I want to use this text and the character of Tyler to explore how gender and sexuality are related, specifically in terms of Tyler’s own sexuality and gender identity. 

There are two main elements to Tyler’s queerness: his* attraction to men, and his femininity. Tyler seems to have become comfortable with his sexuality before the text begins, and though he never explicitly labels himself as “gay” or “queer” or even “attracted to men,” neither does he hide his sexuality or speak around the moments when it comes to the surface of the text. While his attraction to men is made very explicit early on in the text (at the moment when the officers bring Mala to the Alms House [9-10], and when the doctor arrives to examine her [22]), his femininity starts out as more implicit, shown through his preference for a traditionally feminine career and his lack of traditional masculine abilities (his account of the physical labor he was assigned at the Alms House especially affirms this [10]). It wasn’t until Mala steals the nurse’s dress for him (75-78) that I began to consider his identity as other than an effeminate gay man. As the text progresses, Tyler’s femininity and non-normative gender identity become more and more explicit, until the very end of the book when he puts on makeup and the nurse’s dress to meet Otoh and Ambrose, appearing the most feminine that he has throughout the entire text (247). 

Tyler’s experience with gender and the social repercussions of not conforming to heteronormativity reflect our own society and recent attitudes around queer identities, specifically in the way people tend to be more comfortable with queer sexualities than with queer gender identities. I think the reason Tyler is more explicit about his sexuality than his gender identity is because gender can be a difficult concept to tear away from heteronormative ideals, more so than sexuality. Identifying as a man who is attracted to other men begins to align Tyler with (straight) women and starts chipping away at the boundaries of heteronormativity. Once he is comfortable with his attraction to men, he can begin exploring what his femininity might mean – and that is the journey his narration shows the readers. 

 

* The first question I had when considering Tyler’s identity is what pronouns to use. Because the text primarily identifies him as male, I could use masculine pronouns for him; however, I could just as easily read the ending of the text as a declaration of identity, and argue that Tyler’s feminine presentation is a sign to use she/her pronouns. Or, I could read the ambiguity of Tyler’s gender as a reason to use they/them pronouns. For the sake of clarity, and because Tyler presents as a man for the majority of the text, I decided to use he/him pronouns to refer to him. However, it appears that the text would just as easily support a different set of pronouns. 

Tyler’s Dress

“I did not even consider leaving her room dressed as I was. I was endowed with a sense of propriety, depended on it, for that matter, for the most basic level of survival. I changed back into my trousers and white-shirt and rubbed my cheeks and lips clean. I stuffed the dress and stockings behind the dresser, deciding to keep if not to wear it again, at least for the memory of some power it seemed to have imparted. It had been a day and evening to treasure. I had never felt so extremely ordinary, and I quite loved it.” (78).

 

Tyler alludes to his non-heteronormative sexuality and non-conforming gender identity in this passage and in several other times throughout the novel. The first time these identities intersect is when he tries on the dress; he enjoys the power wearing the dress gives him. Dressing in traditionally feminine clothing gives him the opportunity to express parts of his self that he has previously been unable to do. He’s never experienced what it’s like to dress as a woman and finds “something delicious about such confinement.” (77) because he has confined this part of his identity for so long. He feels “extremely ordinary” and “love[s] it”. (78) He likes feeling like a woman, but we don’t know yet if he wants to be one or simply enjoys expressing himself as more feminine than masculine. He simply says he identifies as something “in-between, unnamed” (71) and that he hasn’t determined all of the facets of his identity yet. If he had the correct language to speak about his sexuality and gender identity he might be able to define it for himself but he may or may not tell anyone else how he feels. He has not articulated or pondered his desire for Otoh or wearing a dress because he lacks the language to do so.

If Tyler could articulate clearly his identity, he would probably only reveal it a few people. Currently, his closest (and perhaps only) friends are Mala Ramchandin and Otoh Mohanty. He feels some sort of attraction to Otoh and a connection to Mala so it is likely that if he came out to anyone, it would be his two friends. He is speechless when Mala tells him he wants to wear the dress and is at first fearful that she may have figured out his secret. When he realizes she not only doesn’t care if he doesn’t identify as cisgender and/or heterosexual but also wants him to feel happy and wear the dress, he feels a sense of relief and freedom.