Imitatio Transvesti: Margery Kempe as a Transgender Saint

"Why gost thu in white? 
Art thu a mayden?"

Book of Margery Kempe

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Vs. the Vicar of Norwich

Between 1415 and 1418, the trans virgin encounters regular conflicts on account of living out the Imago Transvesti, resulting in a series of struggles that offer a model of life for Christians and those called to live Imitatio Transvesti. Whereas the trans saint is lives in relative peace while abroad, where she is a stranger in a stranger land, once she returns to her home country of England, where knows the language, she begins to teach and debate. Abroad, people may merely observe her. At home, people hear her preaching the virtues of her Imitatio Transvesti and causing others to follow it. She moves beyond a wonder to be observed to a social revolution to be reckoned. Three episodes make up the primary contest between the trans virgin and local authorities, collectively producing a drama in the hagiography as the way of the world, the Imitatio Mundi, and the way of the trans saint, Imitatio Transvesti, are brought into contrast and conflict. The first event occurs in late 1415 in Norwich with a Vicar. The second event occurs in 1417 with the Mayor of Leicester. The third event occurs in late 1417 with the Archbishop of York. Through these conflicts, the Imitatio Transvesti of the Book of Margery Kempe follows in the late medieval scholastic tradition of dialectic argument. Whereas Marinos’s tale is more passive in its resistance to Imago Mundi, the model Kempe provides shows a more active way of living Imago Transvesti. Centuries later, whereas the passive trans monk is accepted as an official saint, the active trans virgin remains contentious. Yet too few medievalists know about Marinos, Kempe maintains a more active fame or infamy. The active Imitatio Transvesti refuses to go away, even by being quietly tolerated and integrated. In this way, Kempe’s model insists that even if society does not like who she is and what she does, it will have to deal with transvestism as a part of the world.

Arriving in Norwich in May 1415, Kempe visits the vicar of St. Stephan's Church, Richard Caister, who interrogates her on her trans identification as a virgin. The Vicar begins their relation combatively, asking, "wher sche had don hir chylde the whech was begotyn and born whil sche was owte, as he had herd seyde" (where she had her child, the one she had conceived and given birth to while she was away, as he had heard). [1] Inverting assumptions, the Vicar suggests that far from being a virgin, she has conceived a child while away. Above all, she is not what she says. Thus, he concludes, she should not present herself as a virgin or face further slander.[2] Ever Slander and scandal remains the cutting edge of the world's threat against trans saints. If she will not return to the gender norms asserted by the Imago Mundi, worse assignment will be made for her. Returning to England, Kempe is better prepared for the wonder of those living under other images of Creation than her Imago Dei. Openly reaffirming her testimony, "sche had in hym how it was owr Lordys wyl that sche schulde be clad in white clothyng" (she showed him how it was our Lord willed that she should be clad in white clothing), and says, “Ser, I make no fors so that God be plesyd therwyth” ('Sir, I make no falsehood and God is pleased with me).[3] Imago Dei may seem false to a world asserting contrary rules, yet the trans virgin commits no lie, laying out her history and revelations for all to see. When ever then the Vicar does not consent but asks for a fellow clergyman to asses her, she at last rejects their authority under the command from God, "I wil not that thu be governyd be hym" (I will not have you be governed by him).[4] A woman once with divided loyalty now affirms she is on the Imago Dei even if the world is not.

Indeed, in the years following her return to England, the trans virgin demonstrates her willingness to undergo struggles to inspire others to join in the Imitatio Transvesti. On Good Friday, 1415, Kempe prays to be vindicated and revived publicly. She asks that if it is God’s will that she be clad in white, that God should grant her a sign of lightning, thunder, and rain, "so that it hyndir ne noy no thyng that I unworthy may the rathyr fulfillyn thy wil" (so that no one can say nothing about me being unworthy, but rather that I fulfill your will).[5] God receives her prayer and confirms that it will be fulfilled on the third day. And so it was. On the next Friday, early in the morning, as she lay in her bed, she saw great lightning, she heard great thunder, and great rain following, and just as quickly it went away again. Kempe recieves this as a sign to once again take on her white clothes, "sche purposyd hir fullych to weryn white clothis," (she intended to fulfill wearing white clothes).[6] Eventually, Kempe keeps this promise. As with the show of the storm, the white clothes again attract attention. The Book accounts, "sche was howselyd al in white, and sithen hath sche sufferyd meche despyte and meche schame in many dyvers cuntreys, cyteys, and townys, thankyd be God of alle" (she was all in white, and suffered much despisement and shame in many counties, cities, and towns, thanks to the God of all).[7] Becoming sainted means to be set apart, a living image of God's diverse creation that inspires others into action. Yet this Imago Dei often contradicts the rules of the Imago Mundi. People have negative reactions causing her to become a target time and again. This is all a part of the imitation of Christ, who also suffered. In this way, the Imitatio Transvesti follows the Imitatio Christi, that by suffering may a saint face the persecution of the world in the name of grace.

The trans saint as an imitation of Christ draws others to follow likewise to see and enact such an image. Once she committed to wearing white in Norwich, the problem arouse that she had no money to buy clothes.[8] God promises to provide. Shortly, Kempe meets a good man of Norwich that welcomed her gladly and sat listening to her stories. Kempe shares with him her need for a loan to buy white clothes.[9] Not only does he offer financial assistance, he directly labors to make her Imago Transvesti materially possible. The Book accounts that this good man bought white clothe and from it made her a gown and a hood, a girdle, and a cloak.[10] By her contingent neediness, being marginalized by her poverty, the trans saint brings others along with her on her way. By his work, the man not only assists in Kempe's embodiment of the Imago Dei, he participates in it. When he arrives with the clothing, Kempe and the man share a revelry in the Imago Transvesti, "he browt hir this clothyng and gaf it hir for Goddys lofe, and meche mor goodnes dede to hir for owr Lordys lofe" (He brought her this clothing and gave it to her for God's life, and much more goodness did for her on behalf of our Lord's life).[11] By returning to the Imitatio Transvesti, the trans saints brings another to the Imitatio Christi. Both revel in God through the shared work of embodying Imago Transvesti. With Kempe and Marinos, Aristotle’s definition of tragedy succinctly describes how public contests of the Imitatio Transvesti inspire public resistance, “an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear or pity.”[12] Through the series of legal contest, the Imitatio Transvesti occurs to bring justice for the trans community and to liberate the cis community from destructive divisions and limits. 

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Vs. the Mayor of Leicester

A significant example of this occurs in the summer of 1417, when Kemp'e encounter with the Mayor of Leicester. Having witnessed the trans virgin in her white clothes, the Major begs her to tell him, "why thow gost in white clothys, for I trowe thow art comyn hedyr to han awey owr wyvys fro us and ledyn hem wyth the" (why you go about in white clothes, because I have truly heard that you come here to take away out wives from us and lead them with you).[13] The Imitatio Transvesti destablizes the rules asserted by the Imago Mundi, including the role of wives. If a wife can assert her identity as a virgin and liberate herself of her husband, others may follow. The danger she poses does not go unnoticed by those who hold privileged positions in the Imago Mundi and want society to continue to imitate its gender norms. As a result, the trans virgin begins to become the target for a wide variety of attacks. Because of the religious nature of her Imago Dei, Kempe refuses to divulge her story to a secular leader, even a patriarchy like the Mayor. Perhaps as the daughter of a prominent Mayor in Lynn may have made Kempe wary of the man's attempts to manage her. The trans virgin deflects the Major's moves by insisting that she would only share her Imago Transvesti with religious authorities. "Syr," she says, "ye schal not wetyn of my mowth why I go in white clothys; ye arn not worthy to wetyn it. But, ser, I wil tellyn it to thes worthy clerkys wyth good wil be the maner of confessyon " (Sir, you will not learn from my mouth why I go about in white clothes; you are not worthy to hear it. But, sir, I will tell it to these worthy clergymen in the manner of a confession).[14] By pivoting from a worldly to a religious authority, Kempe proves that she has nothing to hide nor is she afraid of speaking truth to the patriarchy.

The trans virgin is careful however to maintain the religious blessing over her mission as protection from secular threats. The story the trans saint tells is the same hagiography of the white clothes the Book describes. Kempe tells an Abbot, a Friar, a Clerk, and others about her transition while on pilgrimage, "how owr Lord be revelacyon warnyd hir and bad hir weryn white clothys er sche cam at Jerusalem" (how our Lord by revelation warned her and bade her to wear white clothes before she came to Jerusalem).[15] By couching the story of her transition within the physical journey of a pilgrimage, Kempe makes the embodiment of the Imago Dei easier to process. Furthermore, even if the clergy are not aware yet that Kempe (and her Book) are telling a hagiography, they will understand the religious narrative of pilgrimage.

By getting the clergy to hear her story and repeat it to others, the trans virgin not only authorizes herself within the Church against allegations from secular threats but trains members of the Church to imitate her storytelling. To be a trans virgin saint , Kempe not only needs to tell her own story, performing herself publically Imitatio Transvesti, but to get others to tell her story. This is what comes of the clergy hearing her tale of transition. Before the clergy, Kempe instructs, "therfor, serys, yyf the meyr wil wetyn why I go in whyte, ye may seye, yyf yow likyth, that my gostly faderys byddyn me gon so, and than schal ye make no lesynggys ne he schal not knowe the trewth" (therefore, sirs, if the Major will learn why I go in white, you may say, if you like, that my clergy bid me to go in such a way, and then shall you make no lies nor shall hide the truth).[16] By first embodying her Imitatio Transvesti, Kempe has elicited an audience of storytellers that might repeat (in imitation of her performance narration) the truths of her Imago Transvesti. Thus, the invisible revelation of the Image Dei will be repeatedly performed in imitated by others. By confirming the clergy as her apostles, like Christ sending his followers to tell the Good News, Kempe is no longer alone in an invisible truth or visible marginalization but has her sainthood affirmed by a multitude of sources. "So the clerkys clepyd up agen the meyr and teldyn hym in cownsel that hir gostly faderys had chargyd hir to weryn white clothis and sche had bowndyn hir to her obediens" recounts the Book (so the clerks went to the Mayor and told him in consul how the clergy had charged her to wear white clothes and that she should be obedient to her mission).[17] Once abandoned, Kempe is no longer on her own. Set apart by society, trans saints nonetheless can regain community through imitators, allies and storytellers.

With the clergy behind her, Kempe is able to assert the validity of her Imago Transvesti from God, telling anyone who questions, "thei han chargyd me that I schulde gon thus, for thei dar not don ageyn my felyngys for dred of God" (they have charged me that I should go thus, for they dare not go against my feelings of dread of God).[18] In the end, the Imago Dei validates the trans virgin not only as one set apart from the Imago Mundi but sainted so as to offer a unique a Imitatio Transvesti for others to follow. The conscience of Kempe is proven clean. She has told no lie, although she contradicts the known truth of the city and reveals more to God's creation. In response to overwhelming support, the Major is forced to concede his Imago Mundi to Kempe's Imago Transvesti. In reconciliation, the Mayor meets with Kempe once again. During the meeting, he offers her a hug. Then he offers her some words of comfort. From this time and for a while, the Mayor proves to be a good friend to the trans virgin.

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Vs. the Archbishop of York

The biggest test of the trans virgin comes in York, where Kempe call on allies who have shared in her story and may rehearse its validity. In late 1417, as Kempe was weeping in Church, the Archbishop of York, Henry Bowet inquires who she is. "Why gost thu in white? Art thu a mayden?" asks the Archbishop. [19] Kempe replies tactfully, "Nay, ser, I am no mayden; I am a wife." The Archbishop jumps to condemn her as a liar, ordering her to be taken away by his men to be manacled, "for sche was a fals heretyke" (for she was a false heretic)[20]. At this point, Kempe resists, "I am non heretyke, ne ye schal non preve me" (I am no heretic, nor will you prove me one). While in white, living as a virgin, she nonetheless answers truthfully about her history as a mother. This seeming contradiction is not the same as a lie. She is open and direct on the complexity of her life. She gave birth to children. She was a mother. These are facts of life that other virgins do not share; distinguishing how a trans virgin's life may differ from other virgins.  As a protector of the Imago Mundi, the Archbishop fears that allowing the trans virgin to move and speak freely in York will destabilize gender roles in medieval society. The Archbishop and his consul agree she must leave, "for the pepil hath gret feyth in hir dalyawnce, and peraventur sche myth pervertyn summe of hem" (for the people have great faith in her visions and by adventure she might pervert some of them).[21] They command that she swear on the Bible that she will leave and never return to York. Kempe refuses and insists on the freedom to travel freely to be among the people. Again, the danger of the trans virgin is not only that she embodies an Imago Transvesti outside the control of the Imago Mundi, but that she might inspire an Imitatio Transvesti thus creating more in the image of the trans saint.

In order to discredit the Imitatio Transvesti, the Archbishop summons a host of agents to imitate his version of the truth. Clerks as well as a monk and a doctor arrive. The doctor had examined Kempe before and knew her bodily state. With a party of authorities following the Archbishop’s Imitatio Mundi, York was sent into uproar against the woman in white. The Book accounts, "Sum of the pepil askyd whedyr sche wer a Cristen woman er a Jewe; sum seyd sche was a good woman, and sum seyd nay" (Some of the people asked whether she was a Christian or a Jew; some said she was a good woman and some said not).[22] The couple of lines here mirror one another, underlining the suspicion that she is a Jew with her being bad. The general effect was that Kempe became the subject of marvel and alien to the community. The force of Imago Mundi was forcing Kempe toward the margins, as a woman set apart not by grace but by exclusion.  To counter this, Kempe asked for permission to raise her own witnesses for her defense. When the Archbishop remains intrenched, she asks him to give some time in the city to collect evidence to support her, "for I must teryin and spekyn wyth good men er I go, and I must, ser, wyth yowr leve, gon to Brydlyngton and spekyn wyth my confessor, a good man, the whech was the good priowrys confessor that is now canonysed" (For I must go and speak with good men and I must, sir, with your leave, go to Brydlyngton and speak with my confessor, a good man, who recently became a Canon).[23] Kempe is successful in this request and is able to block some of the slander by mounting her own society of defense, including a letter from her old confessor validating the revelation of the Imago Transvesti and her living out the Imitatio Transvesti. Credits procured, Kempe is once again free to move about York. Trans saints inspire imitation in allies, who enact Mimesis by fighting “as if” the attack were on them.[24] As with Marinos, Augustine’s words reflect how the Imitatio Transvesti in the Book of Margery Kempe, “Let them be an example unto the faithful by living before them and stirring them up to imitation.”[25]

Thus, if the Archbishop cannot get rid of her, he moves to stop Kempe from telling her story, "ne techyn ne chalengyn the pepil" (not to teach nor to challenge the people).[26] Kempe flatly refuses. "Nay, syr, I schal not sweryn," she saus, "for I schal spekyn of God and undirnemyn hem that sweryn gret othys whersoevyr I go " (No sir, I shall no swear, for I shall speak of God and in His name sway others wherever I go).[27] Kempe then adds that scripture attests that women were allowed to hear Christ, follow Christ, speak of Christ, and Christ blessed them. Then the Clerks began attacking her on the grounds of her preaching the Word of God, citing letters from Saint Paul that forbids women to act as a priest, that no woman should preach.[28]  To this Kempe replied that she was not guilty of preaching because preaching is defined as reading from scripture and she was illiterate, unable to read. "I preche not, ser," she says, "I come in no pulpytt. I use but comownycacyon and good wordys, and that wil I do whil I leve" (I preach not sir, I came in no pulpit. I use but common knowledge and good words, as I am allowed).[29] Unable to read, Kempe’s mode of learning and teaching is through imitation. This truth confirms Kempe's previous statements when she was interrogated on the doctrines of faith and answered readily, "wythowtyn any gret stody so that he myth not blamyn hir" (without any great study so that he might not blame her).[30] Kempe's replies were unstudied. Rather, all her knowledge of scripture comes either from listening to clergy, especially her confessors, or by revelation. Indeed, time and again, Kempe's Imitatio Transvesti aims at justifying itself not by written authority but by embodied and experienced truths.

Through repeated performance and the imitation of allies, the trans saint wears down the Imago Mundi. After hearing her defense time and again, as well as the words of allies who authorize and repeat her story, at last the Archbishop surrenders his assault and gives her some money for her troubles.[31] Struggle after struggle, Kempe both imitates previous trans saints and creates a model of imitation. Over the centuries, readers continue to read trans hagiographies and become trans saints because of ongoing problems in the world’s limited definitions of gender, as well as through the continuation of a tradition of reclaiming the image and mode of life through the transitioning of gender identity and expression. This is especially true in the late Middle Ages, as women such as Margery Kempe look back to older stories in order to find alternatives to unlivable conditions. Indeed, by modeling itself on the trans hagiographies of the early Christian period, the Book of the Margery Kempe adapted an image and a model for later generations. “Such efforts to mold herself on the examples of holy women anticipate a practice that would become more common by the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries…” writes Verini. “Such acts suggest that Margery’s imitation of female exemplars was the forerunner of a practice of female imitation that adumbrated a larger web of female interconnections.”[32] Yet this interconnection goes beyond femaleness, existing in the space between and across. The trans monk and the trans virgin share commonalities, even similar genitalia, but what bonds them is a shared struggle, a mutual liberation, and a continuing narrative that builds on those that have come before and lay the seeds for future transitions.

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Part 1: Imago Transvesti: 

Margery Kempe as a Transgender Saint

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Notes

[1] BMK 2419-21.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid. 2427-9.
[4] Ibid. 2430-1.
[5] Ibid. 2433-4.
[6] Ibid. 2436-41.
[7] Ibid. 2453-6.
[8] Ibid. 2433-56.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid. 2447-56.
[12] Aristotle Poetics. I.xi.
[13] BMK 2727-28
[14] Ibid. 2720-31.
[15] Ibid. 2732-5.
[16] Ibid. 2737-40.
[17] Ibid. 2740-2.
[18] Ibid. 2735-40.
[19] Ibid. 2923-4
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid. 3023
[22] Ibid. 2934.
[23] Ibid. 2960-3.
[24] Gebauer and Christoph Wulf 1.
[25] Augustine. Confessions. XXI.xiii
[26] BMK 2963-4.
[27] Ibid. 2964-72.
[28] Ibid. 2972-3031.
[29] Ibid. 2975-7.
[30] Ibid. 2943-9.
[31] Ibid. 3023-3028.
[32] Verini 384.

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Introducing Margery Kempe: 

The Wife of Lynn’s Tale 

Lynn Festival Fringe Production

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Trans Saints: Imitatio Christi in The Last Time I Wore A Dress

“The more I talked to Jesus, the more I liked him, 
and the less crazy he seemed. ”

Dylan Scholinski
The Last Time I Wore A Dress

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Imitation as Counter-Reality

Imitation is not only a matter of performance but embodiment and circumstances. In "Body Talk: Gestures of Emotion in Late Medieval England," Paul Murphy writes on how Christ fashioned the model by which the Imitatio Christi would follow in later generations. For Christ too, this was a process of engaging with and reacting to the world, to the point of suffering and death. "The cross forces Jesus to take on the shape of the cross," observes Murphy, "and as such, humankind are to be considered exemplars of that shape just as they are to imitate Christ's example" (Murphy 2016). Our bodies take on the shape of our sufferings. Imitatio Christi then is not only how we respond to God but how we respond to the world. The figurative cross-section is visible in how the Imago Tranvesti can move toward the Imago Dei at the same time that it is set apart and marginalized by the Imago Mundi. As a result, while postmedieval generations of trans persons may find themselves living outside of Christian community and faith, nonetheless they can come to share in the suffering of Christ (or Christ figures). In this way, while occupying a point in the modern era, trans persons can find themselves within a living narrative of medieval continuity. Murphy observes that for late medieval Christians, "It did not suffice to imitate Christ in his moral teachings, but rather it was demanded that a sensual and emotional activity be completed to better understand the sufferings of the Passion" (Murphy 2016). Unlike models of Christianity that emphasizes otherworldly purity, the Imitatio Christi of saints emphasize sharing a lived position of suffering and opposition to an unjust world. In this vein, one does not become a saint by excelling in worldly virtue but by opposing the norms of the world in ways that bring one closer to the suffering of others, particularly the suffering of Christ. Following this tradition within the hagiographic genre, Dylan Scholinski's memoir, the Last Time I Wore A Dress, surprisingly makes an overt move toward affirming an Imitatio Christi from within the secular circumstances of the mental hospital. For Scholinski is gifted with a chance to relate to a living Christ figure in the form of a fellow mental patient who believes himself to be Jesus Christ himself. Through their shared sufferings by a world that rejects them, the two form a conjoined Imitatio Christi and Imiatio Transvesti that gestures back toward a medieval tradition of imitation even as it responds to very modern circumstances.

Imitation gives a sense of counter-reality or non-reality. The madness of a man who claims to be Jesus Christ is diagnosed as disordered in this sense. It is not-real that he is Christ, therefore to live as though he is Christ is sick. Likewise, the "girl" who lives like a "man" is regarded as imitation of the same non-reality. Imitation as a form of fakeness is then the justification for the asylum locking up youths. Scholinski's memoir however argues against this understanding and argument on imitation. "Even if we'd looked up Gender Identity Disorder, I don't think anyone would have tried to fake it," Scholinski writes. "We knew the rules: pacing, screaming, hallucinating and vomiting were okay. Not okay was walking around with a scarf in your hair, for a boy, or being like me, a girl who never felt comfortable in a dress" (24). A man knows that he is not to say he is Jesus Christ unless he is Jesus Christ. A youth knows that he is not to live like a man unless he is a man. The rules are evident and understood. The other things Scholinski lists are also understood as unacceptable but for different and related reasons. Pacing, screaming, living out visions or fashion statements, even vomiting are all forms of resistance. They are ways that those incarcerated for being fake and unreal assert the reality and transgressive power. In screaming and vomiting the body literally unleashes their internal disgust with the reality being shoved down their throats. In pacing, as will explore shortly, the body walks and may even cross the limits of freedom. Imitation may be counter-real in another sense than non-real. Imitation may be a way of changing reality, asserting alternative ways of being, living, and relating.

The movement of people within the mental hospital causes unexpected relations to occur and over time patients and staff began to imitate one another. Indeed, at first Scholinski tried to assert a level of superiority and distance between himself and other patients. In this way, in his first encounters he imitated the role of staff more than fellow patient. "Being in a mental hospital was a boon for my counseling skills," writes Scholinski, "although after a while I got confused." Over time of meeting the personalities of the hospital, Scholinski began to like them and even began to question how alike they were or could be. A trans youth incarcerated with persons with different diagnoses put them all into similar positions, made similar demands, and forced them into similar routines. Likewise, as with many friendships, relationships with the other patients as peers brought Scholinski to regard himself more as an equal with them. Yet the more he began to associate and imitate other patients, the more the divide between himself and others, trans and mad, began to dissolve. He began asking how he appeared to others. "Maybe I don't know I'm insane," Scholinski wondered. "They don't know they're insane, so why should I know?" (20). After reflecting how life in a mad house made him question what madness actually is, Scholinski describes how the system reacted to such discussions arising between patients like him and Jesus. "The staff discourage this sort of questioning," writes Scholinski. "They liked the line between sane and insane to be perfectly clear" (19). The act of turning someone into a saint can be a transgressive move. In the eye of society, those who have been set apart are marginalized because they resist normative traits and values. The work of re-narrating the mad house into a place where one may meet Jesus Christ (or one representation of Him) and the mad as perhaps worthy of imitation turns the system of madness inside out. 

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Imitation as Solidarity

"'I am Jesus,' he said. 'I Know it's hard to believe, but I am Jesus.'" What draws Jesus and Scholinski together is that both of them believe themselves to be persons that other people do not believe them to be. In the case of Scholinski, the butch soon-to-be trans man is isolated by a world that insists that he is (and should be) a girly girl. Jesus's case is more specific. Jesus is isolated by the world because they deny he is Christ. Ironically, the world also denied that Jesus Christ was who he said he was. In both cases, it is as much the belief of the patient as much as the disbelief (or alternative belief) of the doctors that set them apart from the rest of society. Despite the differences between Scholinski and this modern Jesus (or the biblical Jesus for that matter) there is a shared subject position: men who believe they are other than the world believes. Over time, this shared physical and social position turns into a shared ethos of resistance and support. They began to believe in each other. Scholinski writes, "the more I talked to Jesus, the more I liked him, and the less crazy he seemed. Zealous, but not dangerous. I could imagine him in the outside world, preaching. He'd probably help some people." The argument that Scholinski employs here is a traditional one in the transgender community as well as Christianity: 'so what if you don't believe what I believe? If it makes my life better and doesn't hurt others, what harm is it in letting me be?' Jesus offers the trans youth a way of believing in themselves and affirming others. Beyond their ontological claims, these assertions for alternative networks of care and support when the authorized system turns against those under its care. If the world regards them as disordered sinners, they will be saints for one another.

Sharing in the discourse of Jesus, the trans youth begins to imitate him in various ways, forming a unique kind of Imitatio Christi. A signature feature of this Jesus (much like the Jesus of the Bible) was that he was an unstopping walker. Jesus would walk the halls to the limit of his capacities. In this walking, Scholinski followed Jesus. "A couple times I paced with him, down the long corridor and back, for exercise," recalls Scholinski. "I wanted to help him. I was always this way, helping my friends. I thought of myself as a roving counselor. It kept people a nice distance away from my problems." Scholinski finds that by helping others he is helping himself. Maybe by saving others (in a way) from the harm of this place, he could save himself. Regardless of why he did it, the walking itself taught the trans youth a valuable way of liberation. The walking was a sign of transgression against beging caged. It helped them imagine and prepare themselves for the day that those walls would not be able to contain them. "Escape was something we all talked about," admits Scholinski. "It was a sign of sanity; it was a statement, I am not one of these people, I am not a mental patient" (51). By imitating this mad Christ's physical actions, the mad trans youth imitated his mental actions as well. In the walking was the statement that they could not be contained. They could not be contained forever by physical walls, nor could they be contained by the walls of diagnosis and marginalization. Like a form of prayer, even if this habit did not magically give them what they wanted instantly, it did prepare them and instill in them a form of resistance. The walls and staff kept them bordered yet within these restrictions they could exercise a degree of freedom and life. Set apart from the world, they could create their own world and walk every square inch of it. While they could not cross the boundaries that separated them from those outside, they could at least cross the boundaries that separated them from each other.

The saner Jesus seems to Scholinski, the more mad he fears he has become. Scholinski considers this dillemna without coming to a firm conclusion. He asks, "If I thought he was sane what did that make me? Mental hospitals are rife with this kind of debate. Are people like Bob [a.k.a. Jesus] simply more sensative than the rest of us? Bombarded with information, the delusioned find it hard to function in the world, but is that their fault or the world's?" Deconstructing the definitions and boundaries of madness, the trans youth becomes habituated to skills that will indispensible in preserving his own sense of truth. Are transgender persons insane and disordered or are they simply more sensitive than the rest of us? Bombarded with information, the dysphoric find it hard to function in a world of fixed and binary genders. But is that the fault of the trans youths or the world? This alternative way of thinking and living is attractive for those set apart by society. Scholinski admits to imitating Jesus even to the extent of claiming to sharing in his visions. "I used to hear voices," Scholinski told him. "That wasn't true, but I didn't want him to feel alone. Plus, I wanted to fit in" (19). Rather than making fun of him through sarcasm or trickery which assert the non-reality of Christ's understanding of himself, Scholinski's claim of sharing in the visions of Jesus is rather an attempt at solidarity. The trans youth wants Jesus to know he is on his side; and, he admits, to try to get Jesus on his side. By reaching out to Jesus, Jesus reaches back towards Scholinski. Much like the Jesus Christ of the Bible, the Jesus Christ of the Mad House challenges others to cross borders and identify with the isolated and marginalized. Whether either Jesus was right about their personal ontological or metaphysical claims, this does not mean that their ethical and social critiques are not valid. The Jesus that Scholinski meets offers him a way of life to imitate that could lead him to make the world a more sensitive and just place.

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Imitation as Resistance

Whereas the Imago Dei affirm the diverse creative power of God, the Imitatio Christi affirm the agency among persons to transform their lives and that of their community. The work of imitation brings alternative forms of life and community together, the authorized systems will exert the supremacy of their definitions and boundaries. By affirming the same in the other, imitation can be an act of solidarity and resistance. While often tolerated, the subversive defiance of Jesus's continuous walking was did not go unnoticed by the hospital workers. Scholinski recounts one night when the conflict between patients and staff burst into violence, challenging the contingent alliance established between Jesus and the trans youth. Scholinski explains, "they went after after Jesus because he wouldn't go into his room at bedtime. He kept pacing" (33). The physical control and isolation of patients was an exercise of power whereby the normitizing establishment worked to control and isolate disruptive spirits. "Three guards held him down on the floor and Jesus whipped his body around, screaming and crying. This guards swore at him. It was nasty," recounts Scholinski (33). Each movement of Jesus's body was an material act of resistance much like his continued assertion of the man he is was an internal act of defiance. Yet the force of putting him on the ground as well as the shoving around his body showed how the medical system could curtail even these movements. The dangerous persistence of the system was that it could be in one moment fixed and in another moment fluid while retaining a degree of control on the body being disciplined. Jesus could yell and twist but we could not escape the firm hands of the hospital. The battle to put Jesus into his room was an assertion that the staff could put the man in his place in a variety of ways and senses. The momentary restricting of Jesus relates to the logic of the asylum as a whole: the hospital has a right to hold the bodies of patients and to assert ever more isolated control. The time specific enforcement of power (asserting a bedtime) likewise related to the overall authority of the hospital to remove the patients from the general population for a given amount of time. The removal from public time and community is imitated in the removal from the time and community within the hospital between patients such as Jesus and Scholinski.

The attempt to isolate and divide Jesus and Scholinski from each other are met by resistance between the bond formed during the regular walks prompts the trans youth to stand in solidarity with his companion. "Another patient, I don't remember who, ran over with me to help Jesus. We yelled, Leave him alone, he's not hurting anyone," recalls Scholinski (33). Ironically, the demand to "Leave him alone" reflects the goal of the staff in one way. The hospital intends on isolating Jesus from the others, inhibiting his ability to walk and talk with them and inspire their imitation of his transgressive spirit. Yet in another way Scholinski's demand inverts the meaning of the isolation. While the hospital removed Jesus and the trans youth from the general population, setting them apart, it also allowed for them to form an alternative community and become saints for one another. Indeed, this night, they would become momentary martyrs for Jesus. "A guard with huge arms wrestled me to the floor and put his black leather boot on my head," recounts Scholinski (33). Because the imitation of Jesus did not stop at walking and talking together, the trans youth's decision to stand by his friend results in him receiving similar punishment. While subdued, the act of resistance forced the hospital to extend their energy threefold.  Scholinski admits that the hospital staff spoke their message louder. "He stood over me for a long moment to make sure I understood who held the power," Scholinski recounts. "I understood. 'Shut up, you fucking crazy queer,' he said" (33). Much like the tradition of imitating Christ by "turning the other cheek," the act of others taking and multiplying the punishment was a way to shame the medical staff. The imitation was a message that there are alternative ways of living, understanding, and enacting power. While Jesus and the trans youth were insane by the standards of the medical staff, the staff was out of line by the standards of the patients. As Scholinski repeated several times in various ways, Jesus being Jesus, like the trans youth being a trans youth, wasn't hurting anyone. "So what if Jesus wouldn't go into his room?" Scholinski asks. "He was peaceful until they arrived" (33). In this moment that the hospital staff was asserting the supremacy of their Imago Mundi, the Imago Transvesti and Imitatio Christi worked together to offer a peaceful alternative. Who are the ones that need to be physically restrained: the ones going for a night walk or the ones beating children?

The scene demonstrates the way and the cost of Imitatio Christi for transgender saints. Yet it the narrative also opens up for others to join in the imitative act of solidarity. The invocation of a nameless other person, "Another patient, I don't remember who, ran over with me to help Jesus," works much like the unnamed "Beloved Disciple in the Gospel of John" wherein the reader can imagine themselves running to Jesus's aid (33). The Imitatio Christi of Dylan Scholinski is not without dangers nor is it normatizing in the way the Christ of his wider society has become. Standing beside one another can be taking blows meant for another. "The next day my neck and shoulder were so sore the nurse gave my Tylenol," recalls Scholinski (33). In a hospital where medicine is regulated, especially for those with recorded drug transgressions, the gift of pain killers is both an act of care and erasure. The medicine is an act of forgiveness but also a reward for a patient who has returned to following the rules. Just as how the removal of pain smoothes over the materials consequence of the defiance, the act of care works to reassert relations between patient and hospital, oppressed and oppressor, after a swift blow to divide the relations between patient and patient. The immediate force of the violence followed by the lingering memory of the pain can secure the system in silence. "In the meeting we didn't mention Jesus being beaten up" remembers Scholinski (33). Nonetheless, Tylenol is not a very powerful drug. Nor is the act of care able to make all things right and peaceful again. The pains will persist and the memory will be retained until a time that voice can be given to both of them. In this way, through the trans hagiography the veil of silence is lifted. Old wounds are reopened and at last the pain is able to speak. Years after Jesus and Scholinski were divided, the pattern of their relationship continues, offering a model of imitation for other oppressed groups to follow. Even if one is not Christ or a trans man, one can embody the same form of resistance and community through a shared suffering in the Imitatio Christi.

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on Transgender Saints

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Trans Saints: Imago Transvesti in The Last Time I Wore A Dress

"I stared in the mirror at the girl 
who was me, and not me:
the girl I was supposed to be."

Dylan Scholinski
The Last Time I Wore A Dress

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Imago Dei and Imago Mundi

On this All Saint's Day, I return to the question of what and who makes a saint "a saint." Is it being an exemplar of values held by the Church? The values of the World? Are saints the embodiment of all things society holds as ideal and normative? This is how saints are often regarded. In the Imago Mundi, saints are those who fit into the picture, in opposition of those sinners who do not fit. A careful examination of medieval hagiographies demonstrates that the conventional vision of saints as Imago Mundi are inaccurate. Saints were saints because they were set apart. Saints did not fit in much like sinners. In fact, by the standards of the world in which they lived, many saints may have been regarded as sinners. The marking of these saints inverted the value systems of the world and God. Saints could be and often would be Imago Dei that were set apart because they directly opposed, reformed, or resisted the Imago Mundi. One typical case that represents the subversive creativity of the Imago Dei was the Imago Transvesti of transgender saints. These trans saints are recorded in trans hagiographies as often existing on the edge of society, in places such as monestaries, where they offer an alternative image of like and an alternative habit of life. A more detailed investigation of the Imago Dei and Imitatio Transvesti in the Life of Saint Marinos the Monk on previous articles. In these medieval trans hagiographies, the trans saints faces oppression but is vindicated in the end. Because these trans lives were celebrated, they became honored as saints in the Orthodox and Catholic Church. Here, I wish to examine modern secular stories of transgender lives that do not end with celebration and canonization. What do transgender hagiographies look like when the Church no longer authorizes new trans saints and indeed has largely adopted the Imago Dei's exclusion of the Imago and Imitatio Transvesti? Who are our trans saints today and how are they made?

To explore how the Imago Transvesti works in modern secular hagiography I will examine one its the genre's genealogical descents: trans memoir. In form, trans memoirs share many generic features with hagiographies. In short, they tell the life of a trans person. A more complex answer is that they seek to make a misunderstood life of someone who is set apart from the world better understood by the world. Often, these trans memoirs come with the ethical imperative (implicit if it is not overtly stated) that the reader and the world need to transform themselves if they are to better integrate those reflecting the image of the trans life as well as to save themselves from the sins of sexism and transphobia. In other words, whether they state a moral or thesis, many trans memoirs today compel the same ethical changes in a reader's life as trans hagiographies must have medieval readers. Furthermore, an often unstated or understated goal of trans memoirs (or any memoir) is to garner a certain level of vindication, understanding, and even fame for its subject. Just as the trans saint functions as a generic image of a population calling for social change, the memoir also presents the image of a particular person. The effect of becoming familiar with the person, learning their story, and the oppressions they faced has the effect of making that person special in the mind the of the reader. That the memoir would be written, circulated, and read is honor enough for many. Yet an effective memoir, like an effective hagiography, draws readers to regard the subject life as set apart and significant if not an ethical role model. Yet even if the subject of the memoir does not offer ideals, they may yet be a guide for readers experiencing or seeking to understand and oppose the challenges faced by the particular trans person. In this way, trans memoirs resist the modern binary of saint and sinner. Medieval saints could be both and so too their modern counterparts.

Toward the end of examining trans hagiographies in a modern form and context, I will close read Dylan Scholinski's The Last Time I Wore a Dress. The memoir recounts the years the author spent incarcerated against his will in a mental hospital, in large part because of a diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder. The book details the extreme lengths the hospital enacted in order to erase the Imago Transvesti from the young trans boy and inscribe the Imago Mundi, the image of a normative heterosexual cisgender girl. An additional reason for this study comes from a shared personal context. The town that Scholinski grew up in and the hospitals in which he was incarcerated exist within the same Polish community in which I lived. Just outside of Chicago, Scholinski was a transgender teen a number of years before me, yet if he had been allowed to receive public education it would have been entirely possible that we may have graduated from the same high school.  In many ways, the life of Dylan Scholinski recalled in the memoir reveals an alternative image of how my life may have developed. The particulars of his life draw sharp distinctions between us, yet this ability to see parts of one's self reflected in the Imago Transvesti of another is a function of the trans memoir and hagiography. Just as the cloister of Saint Marinos reveals something about the medieval Imago Dei and Mundi, so too mental hospital of Dylan Scholinski reveal much about the image of transgender and normativity in our world. In order to better understand these images, this examination will occur in two parts in order to counterpoint the study of Saint Marinos's medieval hagiography. First, I will examine how the memoir presents the conflict between his Imago Transvesti (as a particular form of the Imago Dei inscribed in his "soul") and the Imago Mundi of the hospital. In the second part, I will attend to the relations and habits formed between Scholinski and another mental patient who believes that he is Jesus Christ. The practices of alliance formed between the patient who acts too much like a man and the patient who acts too much like Christ form a secular, mad, modern form of the Imitatio Chrisit. 

To begin, it is necessary to understand that images are not always visible with and through the eyes but can be constructed and consumed through a variety of media, including narrative. The Imago Mundi that is imposed on transgender youths is just as varied as the Imago Transvesti it is supposed to replace. Just as the Imago Dei is supposed to be present in every human life and yet each life is distinct and ever changing, there is something diverse and dynamic about images. The Imago here concerned are moving images. In this respect, narrative may be better at capturing the living Imago Mundi than static photographs. Thus, without needing to give photographs or fixed details, Scholinski is able to communicate what the Imago Mundi was for him and how it was imposed on his trans life in the mental hospital. "Every morning I lowered my eyelids and let Donna make me up," he recalls. "If I didn't emerge from my room with foundation, lip gloss, blush, mascara, eyeliner, eye shadow and feathered hair, I lost points. Without points I couldn't go to the dining room, I couldn't go anywhere, not that we were going many places to begin with. Without points, I was not allowed to walk from the classroom back to the unite without an escort.... Either choice I hated: makeup, or a man trailing in my shadow" (IX). From the memoir, readers are not given a specific image of girlhood being forced onto his body, yet by listing the tools of inscription a generic image of cisgender femininity is invoked. The color of the lip gloss did not matter so much as the application of makeup. The Imago Mundi is more about the power of execution, the authority of the world to dictate how his gender is embodied more than any specific feature. The point system emphasizes the abstraction of the Imago Mundi as a value structure to be inscribed and imposed. Just as there may be many varieties of transgender saints within the Imago Transvesti, the Imago Mundi which opposes it is able to transcend time period and gender norm as a force of marginalization that at one moment sends one youth to a monastery and at another moment sends another to a mental hospital.

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Images of the World

Icons of saints are set apart because they are Imago Dei and not merely images of the world. The transformations of appearance in many hagiographies show audiences how divine truth can exist just on the edge of what the world can see, on the horizon of understanding, or just beneath the mundane. While transgender transitions are often imagines by the public as a form of disguise or drag, covering up the identity of the person, for trans saints this transvestism, the Imago Transvesti, reveal in visible ways what society has long covered with its own designs. Scholinski recalls looking at himself done up in the mirror of the mental hospital where he was held and forced into feminine clothes against his will. "I stared in the mirror at the girl who was me, and not me: the girl I was supposed to be" Scholinski writes(IX). The mirror scene is a traditional mechanism of transgender film, art, and narrative to show disjunctures between the outside and inside. The duplication of the images represents competing images of the trans person themselves. Which will win out? The image the world sees or the image inside the trans person, written, as Scholinski describes, in their soul? "The staff was under orders to scrutinize my femininity: the way I walked, the way I sat with my ankle on my knee, the clothes I wore, the way I kept my hair. Trivial matters, one might say. But trivial matters in which the soul reveals itself," Scholinski writes. "Try changing these things. Try it. Wear an outfit that is utterly foreign to you... See how far you can contradict your nature. Feel how your soul rebels" (IX-X). As in a mirror, one image faces off with another. Another critique waged against trans persons, especially transvestites, is that they are too changeable. Yet Scholinski's resistance to the gender forced on him demonstrates that his soul is fixed even while his body changes. The Imago Dei is made of things unchanging if unseen while the image of the world is mutable if empirical. 

When society cannot dig out the transgender soul, it suffices to control the person's embodiment down to the skin. Scholinski recalls that when he was first brought against his will to the asylum, he was forced to strip off his clothes. "A clerk went through every pocket of every pair of my torn-up jeans, unrolled the cuffs of my socks, put her hand in the silky lining of my suitcase," Scholinski records. "I'm certain I had to take off all my clothes down to my bra and underwear" (7). Once inside the hospital, Scholinski's clothing and gender will be closely controlled by the medical staff. At the threshold to this isolation, the medical panopticon cuts through the layers of the identity that Scholinski had built for himself. When social construction is reduced to systems, the creative work and agency of the trans life (and its Creator) can be take out of the equation. The trans person is imagined as only a social construct, without its own internal choice or image. Trying to control the changes of the the trans life, the medical hospital works to strip Scholinski down to the core and then rebuild. The system excuses this extreme invasion of the trans person's body on the grounds of healing. They claim to seek out unhealthy or toxic elements on the body (drugs, weapons, contraband) in order to exert changes in the body (behavior, mindsets, beliefs) because of the danger the trans person poses to trans exclusive society. By reaching down toward the transgender soul, the medical system turns the trans life into an embodiment of a disease to be quarantined and set aside from the general population (thereby justifying the systems existence and force); the negative or inverse images of cis society. 

Altering the visual image of the trans person is not enough, systems construct narratives that turn them either into a sinner or a saint. In medical systems, sin as a spiritual disease (an illness of the psyche, or soul) is replaced by the diagnosis of a physical or mental disease. For many trans persons, such as Scholinski, their lives were pathologized and seized through the imposition of a diagnosis for Gender Identity Disorder. After being processed, reclothed and given a room wherein he will be kept, the doctors begin in on Scholinski to tell him the medical justifications for his isolation. "[The Doctor] said the other diagnosis was something called Gender Identity Disorder... He said that means you are not an appropriate female, you don't act the way a female is supposed to act," recalls Scholinski (16). The "supposed to" here reflects an implicit command in society that the medical system here makes explicit. Instead of religious commandments, "thou shall" or thou shall not," which are supposed to have divine authority and authorship, medical discourses follow social assumptions and norms without easily definable origins. Often, cis society defined itself by how it set apart and controlled trans society as its negative image. Cisgender became not-transgender. Scholinski was not affirmed as a trans man but as a "not... appropriate female." The invisible truth of the transgender soul or image is recast from a thing unseen into an embodiment of negativity. Transgender is treated as the dis- to the cisgender's -order. Without context or narrative, Scholinski's trans life would not be recognizably diseased. Yet forced within the discursive and physical frame of medical institutions, Imago Transvesti are set apart as a dangerous alternative to the ruling image of the world.

In the negative construction of the Imago Transvesti, environments, narratives, and images work together to set apart trans lives. Scholinski recalls what may one of the earliest moments that an authority told him that he embodied the wrong picture of himself. The moment occurred when an educator brought Scholinski aside in school and ran through ideas of what professions he might like to have one day. "She held up cards with pictures of a policeman, a farmer, a construction worker, a secretary and a nurse, and said which ones I'd like to be: police officer and construction worker. She looked at me with a curious face like a mother robin. She was the first one who said I had a problem with my gender" (30). Likely, the genitals of the images are not visible yet the gender of the figures are supposed to be apparent. Police are supposed to look like men. The nurses are supposed to look like women. In turn, these socially dictated images are supposed to reproduce themselves. Implicitly, a girl sees an image of a female secretary and so becomes a secretary. The oppressed can be an instrument of enacting an oppressive system. A mother robin works to create a little robin, even if both will remain caged. Yet Scholinski was not only choosing jobs considered "inappropriate" for women but positions "inappropriate" for any marginalized person. Police officers enforce the law, enacting the power of systems on society. Construction works on the other hand enact the literal power to shape the image of the world. What would the world look like is women were in charge of the legal and physical structures of the world? What would it look like is transgender persons could claim that authority? Or intersex or disabled persons? Evidently, by choosing images other than those assigned to him, Scholinski is following another image, an alternative image, an Imago Transvesti that may be an "inappropriate," disordered, and problematic choice. In the end, Scholinski will be isolated and set aside because of following these Imago and not the image of the world.

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Set Apart

Isolation is no safe haven for the trans saint. The exclusionary system of the cisgender binary allows for no mixtures and movements between categories. Expelled from one space by choice or force, trans saints are often not allowed entrance into the other. As a result, trans persons medieval and modern often find themselves caught between chairs, homeless. This sense of homelessness began for Scholinski early in his life, when he was shopping with his father and needed to use the restroom. "On the door it said: WOMEN," recalls Scholinski. One his way out however, he encountered trouble, "a balding clerk with wet produce stains on his apron gave me a look of raw hatred. He grabbed my hand. He wanted me to know who my parents were and I said my father was in the aisle. We looked down each one until we saw him pausing before the cereal. The clerk hauled me over and said, ' We found your son in the women's bathroom.' My father said calmly, 'That's not my son.'" (106). While he was sent to the mental hospital in part to make him accept his place as a woman, spaces for women were often not safe for Scholinski. His presence and performance of identity alienated him from women's spaces. Yet neither was he accepted as a man among men. It is true enough for his father to say, "that's not my son," yet his actions in committing the child to a mental hospital was enough to say, "this is not my daughter." Trans youth often find themselves placed in the dangerous no-man's-land by the enforcement of gender binaries in spaces like bathrooms. Here the privacy of cisgender persons is protected not by merely isolating trans persons but by ensuring that they don't have even the same privacies to relieve themselves in peace. In other moments, Scholinski recalls going to and being assaulted in a bathroom, "a group of them followed me in and said 'are you sure you're a girl?' Sitting in the stall I waited until the laughing stop and I heard the door close behind them" (106). These acts may seem like the innocent misunderstandings of a Clerk or a few youths but they reflect a wider systemic oppression of trans persons. The pressure put on the Imago Transvesti will not release until no space is left free from the mark of the Imago Mundi. Trans saints are made to be set apart for a special place in the tapestry in Creation but as an excluded and erased smudge that is at home no place.

There is no place in Imago Mundi for the Imago Transvesti. Rejected from communion with his family, school, or wider neighborhood, Scholinski finds himself at the medical hospital without any other place to call his own. When Scholinski first arrives, he insists to a member of the staff that the asylum is no home for him either. "I told her I didn't need to be here. 'Uh-huh,' she said" (13). The response is sarcastic, a dismissive reply to crazy person who does not know they are crazy. Yet it is also ironically true. This hospital will not be a home for him. Recording various observations of various medical staff during his time in the care of the hospital, one doctor observes, "Patient has no sense of home" (35). The young trans man has a residence. He dwells -against his will- in asylums for several years. Yet this place of isolation is a physical embodiment of his marginalization and separation from the world. This is a place he is set apart and not merely set somewhere else. He is sainted not by becoming an exemplar of acceptable norms but by being unacceptable. If the trans man makes sense, this meaning and orientation is not of this world. Indeed, the function of the medical isolation is in part to ensure that the trans man does not become at home. When Scholinski is moved to another hospital, he finds that he is again being disoriented through his gender as he is placed (as a girl) among a male-only unit. "All other units were co-ed, a mix of psychotics, violent types and regular depressed people," Scholinski explains, "so there was no reason to throw me into the all-male unit, they could have shifted a depressed boy around. I suppose they thought throwing me to the boys would encourage my girly-girl side" (138). The move is supposed to shock him, emphasize his girlhood and thereby reorient him towards men in a sexuality and not gender identity. While Scholinski was able to form an alternative community in his last hospital, this move is intended to further throw him off his center. In this way, the memoir emphasizes the sainting of the trans youth by showing how the world continually functions to displace him, set him further aside until he comes to embody that sainthood.

The crux that many saints face is what to do when there is no place in the world exists for them and the image of another world remains unclear or uncertain. Too often, escape from the isolation the world imposes on trans life is death. Scholinski recalls how the medical process of chipping at his Imago Transvesti layer by layer changed his appearance but made him a soul with no life left in body. "My new self was pleasing. My new self: girly-girl dead stranger" (120). The image of the girl being fashioned was not only an artificial construct, it was an unlivable life. Rather than embrace a trans image of life, the medical staff preferred instead to turn Scholinski into an image of cis girlhood even if it killed him. The face of a girl was for the trans man the face of the dead. One way or another, liberation or isolation, transition or death, the girl in the mirror was no long for the world. Leaving nowhere left to run in the world or in himself, Scholinski considered suicide the final option. Better death than an unlivable life. Yet this final act of self agency, this final corner where the medical staff could not get at him, death, was painted for the trans man as an unfair rejection of the world. "Suicide is a selfish act," said one of the medical staff after Scholinski's suicide attempt, "Do you know that?" (73). In a place where no personal decisions (that did not follow the medical systems guidelines) was considered selfish and aberent it is not surprising that suicide would be among those personal decisions that the staff condemned. For a system only concerned with the appearance and mechanical functions of life, an unlivable cis girlhood was preferable to escape by death. Ironically, such condemnation and how it was responded to only served to demonstrate how this "selfishness" and isolation was in fact constructed by the medical environment. After being chastized for his suicide attempt, Scholinski was brought into a private room to think about what he had done. "Why the hospital would lock me in a room by myself when I felt so sad I wanted to die, I don't know" writes Scholinski (73). By leaving the suicide alone in a room after his attempt, the statement is made: you cannot escape even by death. The temptation to try again is teased and yet thwarted by the stark reminder of the  recent failure. The lesson is made: life and suicide both lead to isolation. Without escape all that is left is submission.

The mechanisms of mental hospitals not only inscribe the Imago Mundi over the visible Imago Transvesti but carve itself into the inner life of the trans saint. While the hospital could and would regulate his outward appearance, Scholinski protected his inner life and truth as his final holdout. "I like to be in control," admits Scholinski, "to keep what was inside my brain inside. It was the only form of privacy I had left" (85). While the hospital insisted that he embody to image of femininity and a sexual orientation toward men, in his mind he maintained the Imago Transvesti as a hidden truth as well as meditate to himself, particularly in his journal, about his experienced attractions to girls in the hospital. This tactic worked for some time, or seemed to work, until one day Scholinski found that even in isolation he was not free. The doctor called the young trans man into the office and discussed with him details of his "disordered" feelings toward women, encouraging him to instead adopt a heteronormative relationship with men. That is when Scholinski realized, "They had read my journal" (98). While in isolation after his suicide attempt, it seemed as though being alone was the final line for the treatment. If he could submit to being a trans saint, set apart because of his diagnosed pathology, then in that sacred cloister he could be free. The trans life of the Imago Transvesti could survive if only within a small hidden frame. Yet this was to be. The World is a jealous God and will permit idols to no other. Over the course of years, Scholinski survives the isolation and treatments of his forced incarceration. Yet when the time comes for him to leave the physical walls behind (coinciding with his approaching legal adulthood) the test of the Imago Mundi was whether it could function to isolate and control Scholinski when he was on his own.  "No one was watching me. Nine months of survellience: I'd survived seclusion, I'd hugged the males, I'd walked around with globs of blue on my eyelids, and now I was here" (127). For years afterwards, Scholinski recalled feeling the eyes on the back of his neck and an inscribed sense of shame that kept him from fully living out and showing his Imago Transvesti. He experienced depression and relapses into suicidal thought. Yet as he carried with him the chains of the mental hospital, practices of liberation and creation developed within the asylum helped him finally break free and reclaim an authentic image of his life - an Imitatio Transvesti built upon a queer and mad Imitatio Christi.

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Coming soon:

Part II: Imitatio Christi in the Last Time I Wore a Dress

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