Tag: Gender Identity

Our Bodies Are Ours to Claim!

In Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, Eli Clare explores his sense of identity through the lenses of gender and disability. Clare is a transgender man who has Cerebral Palsy–a disability that affects movement. In the first chapter of this book, “The Mountain,” Clare repeatedly brings up this idea of the body being home. However, he juxtaposes this feeling of belonging in a physical body by stating that “bodies can be stolen, fed lies and poison, torn away from us,” (Clare 12). Clare begins the paragraph by offering his readers comfort, showing them that regardless of the communities they are ostracized from and the family that might hate them for their identity, they all belong somewhere, and that is in their own body. However, he takes this comfort away from the readers by mentioning that our bodies can be stolen and we can stop feeling like they are our own.

Clare is bringing to light his own past trauma, showing the readers that he did not feel in control of his body. There were people in his life whom he trusted, including his own father, and they tortured Clare for years, stealing that trust and controlling his body. This caused Clare to disassociate from his own body–the one thing that should be his and his alone.

I don’t believe that Clare tells his audience about his past trauma because he wants us to feel scared and alone. I think Clare shares these moments in his life for the purpose of teaching his readers a valuable lesson: “the stolen body can be reclaimed,” (Clare 13). At the time when Clare was being physically and sexually abused, he still identified as female. He had all of this trauma associated with that female identity. By transitioning away from the female-identifying self that was abused for years, Clare was given the space to heal, reclaim his own body, and embrace his identity as a transgender man. He made a decision for himself, allowing him to feel in control of his own body and identity.

Clare has written a lot about his multi-faceted identity and how his body comes into play. That being said, he also explores the bigger picture: even though our identity can change throughout the course of our life, it will always be a part of who we are. We can change our identity to better fit how we feel inside, but our identity can never be taken away from us, unlike our body. From Clare’s own identity as a disabled person, a former lesbian, and a trans man, his identity is something that will always belong to him, just as our identities will always belong to us.

“God’s” Will

Something interesting I found was that Boy in a Whalebone Corset started and ended with mentions of locusts. At the start of the poem the grass is compared to a “sleeping swarm of locust” and at the end of the poem the night is said to be “made of locusts.” This repeated phrasing of “swarms of locusts” is reminiscent of the ten plagues in the Bible. In Exodus, the Egyptians are subjected to ten plagues until Pharaoh agrees to set the Israelites free. The plague of locusts specifically, is the eighth plague followed by the plague of darkness and the death of a first born. Parallels can be drawn between the father and Pharaoh in this poem, similar to how Pharaoh wouldn’t let the Israelites be free, the father refuses to allow the boy to be free to be himself and wear what he wants.  

I find it interesting that locusts specifically were chosen as a descriptor as they are known for destruction. Which mirrors that of the destruction the boy’s clothes are facing in the hands of his father. Continuing with the plague theme, the final plague was the death of a first born. While the boy didn’t physically die in this poem. One can argue that his soul did when his father burned his clothes thus essentially killing off his identity.  

I think the meaning behind the implication of religion in this poem is perhaps the reasoning behind the father’s discontent and disapproval of his son’s clothes. Which is further emphasized by the irony of the father burning the son’s clothes, and their smoke “being mistaken for Old Testament God.” Ending the poem on this note drives home the assumption of religion being the guiding factor of why these clothes are unacceptable and why wearing such items needs to be punished.