The Transgender Turn: The Archive's View of Eleanor Rykener

"Undecimo die Decembris anno regni regis Ricardi secundi decimo octavo, ducti fuerunt hic coram Johanne Fressh maiore et aldermannis civitatis Londoniensis Johannes Britby de comitate Eboracum et Johannes Rykener, se Elianoram nominans veste muliebri detectus."

The Interrogation of Eleanor Rykener
London 1394

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Introduction

On December 11th, the Archive -- London Metropolitan Archives, Plea and Memoranda Roll A34, m.2 -- was present and witness to the turn of events on Cheap Street between John Britby and Eleanor Rykener, recording their confessions and the interpretations of these confessions by the scribe. In the previous sections, the Archive has been taken as an extension of the scribe's view of the events. But the Archive is also our only record of Britby's view of events. And likewise, the text is also our record of Rykener's view of events. Thus while the scribe put ink to paper, the authorship of the Archive is a collaborative work with words, perspectives, and narratives being contributed by multiple persons. Because it is an assemblage of multiple co-authors, the Archive is not identical to any one view of Eleanor Rykener or her story. As such, the Archive is worth considering in and of itself as evidencing the dysphoria in the archive of Eleanor Rykener and the wider dysphoria in the medieval archive which has been compounded by the Cisgender Turn and which the Transgender Turn seeks to answer.

What does it mean that the Archive, Plea and Memoranda Roll A34 m.2, is a dysphoric Archive? The short definition of dysphoria provided by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) attests that gender dysphoria occurs when one's gender identity or expression conflicts with the gender assigned by society, for a period of at least six months. The longer diagnostic definition also acknowledges the present of a disgust for certain forms of gender and an overwhelming desire for another form of gender. In both these respects, the Archive, A34 m.2, both reflects dysphoria, embodies dysphoria, and creates dysphoria. In the first case, the Archive reflects the dysphoria in the courtroom. The central question of the interrogation seems to be whether or not Rykener is a woman, Eleanor (according with her expressed and identified gender), or a man (according with the assigned gender given by the court and other parts of her history as "John"). The courtroom reflects the textbook circumstances of dysphoria. Furthermore, I would argue that the Archive, A34 m.2, does indeed have three co-authors, Eleanor Rykener, John Britby, and the scribe. Because the Archive is the composite perspectives of all three regarding Rykener's gender, the Archive itself embodies this dysphoria of self and society, identity and expression versus social assignment. The Archive also seems to embody the tensions, disgust, and desires of all three. The Archive records that Rykener calls herself Eleanor, yet repeatedly calls her John nonetheless, yet uses Latin to carefully avoid using gendered pronouns. The Archive embodies the disgust for and desire for different genders. Finally, as seen in the consideration of the Scribe as the perspective which greatly informs the Cisgender Turn on Eleanor Rykener, the Archive is also the grounds on which a Transgender Turn may arise as well. 

What do we do with dysphoria? This is a foundational question that the Transgender Turn seeks to answer on the individual and systematic scales. Faced with evident dysphoria, the cisgender turn may very well throw up its hands with frustration or joy. Unspeakable! Ambiguous! Queer! Yet following the lead of Eleanor Rykener's turn, a transgender turn on the Archive, A34 m.2, might likewise seek to alleviate dysphoria by transitioning discourses. This means changing some of the ways that we discuss the Archive, for instance the names and pronouns that we use, but does not necessarily mean that problematic or messy parts of history are merely erased. Granted, some forms of transition use the formulation of absolute change as describe by Carolyn Walker Bynum in Metamorphosis and Identity, wherein the past and future are divided absolutely at the point of change. Yet this is not the only or perhaps the most ethical form of trans history. As Sandy Stone writes, "transsexuals must take responsibility for all of their history" (Stone 49). So must the Transgender Turn. Yet how do we move forward without erasing the past? How do we synthesize the old turn and the new turn? Once again, Rykener's leads the way by epitomizing a Transgender Turn based on consent, payment for labor and a privileging of the transitioning identity.

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Transitioning

Despite the cisgender turns' ignorance and compounding of the problem, the dysphoria of the Archive can follow the transgender turn toward transitioning by ethically engaging it within the terms it sets for consensual use. While the dysphoric archive contains the stories of multiple persons, cisgender and transgender, only the consent of the cis persons has thus far been affirmed by later historians. Although certainly coerced into telling his story by the courts, John Britby consents to tell his story within the persona of John Britby. Because this name and identity seems to match his given name and identity, defining him as cisgender, the scribe and historians affirm both by telling the story of John Britby as John Britby's story. The power to tell one's story and one's name may be considered perfunctory by some, yet the fact that it can occur without remark points to an element of cisgender privilege perpetuated by the cisgender turn. Britby consents to tell his story in a certain way and that certain was is respected. We see how remarkable this consensual exchange between storyteller, scribe, and historian is when we consider the case within the same archive wherein the grounds for consent are not honored. Like the cisgender man, the transgender woman, Eleanor Rykener, is also asked to give her name and story to the court. The name she gives the court is Eleanor. The story she tells is Eleanor's story, mostly concerning her life as Eleanor. These are the grounds for her consent, that she will tell her story but she will tell her story her way: as Eleanor. Yet the scribe and the cisgender turn on the archive do not honor the conditions of this consent. The scribe and cisgender turn uses Rykener's story but remove or side-line Eleanor from it. Instead, the scribe and cisgender turn calls her John, her deadname. Throughout the archive, the scribe calls her John. The cisgender turn follows suit. Alternatively, some in the cisgender turn force Eleanor on the same level as John, describing her as John/Eleanor. Even as Eleanor is placed alongside John, however, she is placed second. As ever, the supposed cisgender persons gets their turn first and the transgender turn comes second. Yet Rykener did not consent to tell her story as "John" or as "John/Eleanor." She consented to tell her story as "Eleanor." The story is thus the story of Eleanor Rykener, wherein John is a footnote. Thus the dysphoria arises from the lack of honoring the conditions for consent. Thus the demand of the transgender turn to transition how scholars approach the archive, to diminish the dypshoria, to eschew the deadname in favor of Rykener's self-identification, and to honor the grounds for a consensual telling of her story.

Before she would consent, Eleanor Rykener demanded to be paid. The demand for transgender persons to be paid for their labor goes hand in hand with Rykener's conditions for consensual relations between the trans body, the trans story, and those who would use them. Yet how should Rykener be paid for her story? No longer living nor with identifiable ancestors, such payment cannot be monetary in the same form as an author might receive from consumers and publishers for sharing her story. Certainly, Rykener was not likely paid by the courts for her story. Indeed, she may have been punished instead. Yet to merely follow the medieval court's treatment of Rykener should not be the motto of the transgender turn toward the archive. Rather, we should consider how else we might honor Rykener's insistence that trans lives be compensated for their labor and use. At this point, another option arises from elsewhere in medieval scholarship: citation. Why should we not consider Eleanor Rykener an author of her own story? Critics might respond that Rykener did not write down her story, that the writer of the Archive is the scribe. Yet other cisgender medieval cisgender storytellers likewise utilize scribes, indeed they may even had been illiterate, and we still give them the honor of citing them as authors. The Book of Margery Kempe is one such example. The Book boasts of using a scribe, multiple scribes, yet scholarship still has adopted the tradition of calling the Book her book, the Book of Margery Kempe. Shall we deny Rykener, another medieval woman who may likewise have been illiterate and therefore dependent on another man to scribe her story? Now, one might respond that Kempe had more control and intention in composing her book than Rykener does over her story. Yet this merely extends the prejudice for literate male authors, or cisgender authors, to include a prejudice for authors of a class and wealth to claim control over their words. Kempe likewise found herself before courts and in prison, yet she had money to tell her side of the story and to preserve it in a book. For all the payment she received in exchange for her sexual consent from the Britby's of her city, Rykener does not have the class nor money nor cis male identity to purchase control over her words. Thus taken from her by coercion, Rykener's story is taken, used, copied, and retold within the cisgender turn without ever paying the author back. This injustice and break from Rykener's conditions for consent might likewise be rectified by another transition in scholarship: naming Eleanor Rykener as an author of her story. Or, at very least, she should by listed as a co-author alongside John Britby who likewise tells part of Rykener's story. Only by paying Rykener through citation and a byline can the transgender turn establish and maintain a commitment that is as important for medieval trans lives as modern trans lives: if you wish to use trans stories and trans bodies, you should pay trans subjects, at very least give them the credit of authorship over their own lives, bodies, names, and stories.

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John – Eleanor is a coproduction by TEHDAS Theatre and puppet theatre HOX Company.

 It was also part of the Turku European Capital of Culture 2011 official program. 

It has been touring in England, Italy, France and USA after the premiere.

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The Transgender Turn: Eleanor Rykener's View of Eleanor Rykener

"Qui ab eo argentum pro labore suo petens sibi consentiebat, 

invicem transeuntes ad illud complendum usque stallum predictum."

The Interrogation of Eleanor Rykener
London 1394

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Introduction

On December 11th, Eleanor Rykener (Elianoram Rykener) confirmed that she had been standing on Cheap Street around 8:00-9:00 PM, where and when she turned back upon and negotiated with a local man, John Britby. She was this day, as in many days before, presenting as a woman and calling herself Eleanor. She learned to perform sex work from a woman, Anna. She also transitioned into living as Eleanor with her teacher's assistance. Responding to Britby's accosting, Rykener demanded to be paid before performing any sexual acts with him. This exchange was one of a series of such exchanges that Rykener procured from other men, for pay, and other women, seemingly without pay. After this turn of the exchange, she consented to sex. She proceeded to a local horse stall and completed the transaction for which Britby had accosted her. Soon after, they were both turned on by local law enforcement, then brought to the court. Therein, Rykener consented to tell her story and how she viewed herself as Eleanor Rykener.

This is the story of Eleanor Rykener from Eleanor Rykener's perspective, and it is important to consider, especially given the way that the Cisgender Turn in scholarship has evaded such a critical trans perspective. First, it is socially important to recognize that although a cisgender man initiated the exchange with her, accosting her, Rykener turns back on him with demands that her payment and consent be established. She turns the narrative and power dynamic of the exchange around, evidencing that her trans womanhood will not be a passive text on which he will write his cis manhood. Second, it is narratively important to recognize that although the transgender turn to speak and historicize comes after the cisgender turn, Rykener consents to tell her story and name her body according to her own words. After the loss of power from various cisgender turns against her, the transgender turn works to reclaim the trans narrative and body.

The second interaction and story to be told between Britby and Rykener centers around the trans woman's demand for consent. In Latin, the word used is "consentiebat." This means, "to assent to, favor, fit / be consistent / in sympathy / unison with, agree." By demanding that payment and consent be factored into the story, Rykener works to reclaim agency over her body and story. He may see her but she turns his head. He approaches her but see receives him. He talks to her but she responds. He asks for sex but she demands payment. He engages with her sexually but she consents. He takes her to a private place but she goes there with him, may even lead him there. He touches her but she touches him back, contact always goes both ways even if only as a form of resistance. Then he is the first to speak but she speaks the most and gets the final word. Consistently, the cisgender turn may initiate and frame events but the transgender turn powers, resists, and reclaims her time, voice, and history.

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Consenting

The critical importance of the transgender turn that Eleanor Rykener is that she transforms a moment of staring, gazing, and being turned on from an accosting cisgender subject into a moment of mutual turning toward one another; into a moment insisting on consent. In her chapter on "Beholding" from Staring: How We Look, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson argues that given how trans people, queer people, crip people, women, and people of color are consistently stared at -- she discounts not being stared at as a viable or practical option -- we must learn how to shift the power from being all about their looking and towards our looks. The looking, as in the case of John Britby's cisgender turn, does indeed take power over and away from Rykener. But Garland-Thomson sees ways that power over one's looks can be reclaimed. "By putting themselves in the public eye, saying 'look at me' instead of 'don't stare,'" writes Garland-Thomson, "people... practice what might be called visual activism" (193). This visual activism is defined as (1) using the urge for others to look at us in order to make them see new things about us, (2) educating those who stare in order to make them look at people differently, better, and (3) to "create a sense of obligation that primes people to act in new ways: to vote differently, to spend money differently, to build the world differently, to treat people differently, and to look at people differently" (Garland Thomson, 193). In all these respects, we may witness in the way the trans woman turns toward the cisgender gaze, that Rykener enacts a form of visual activism which compels others to see new things about her, to see her differently, and to motivated to provide payment and consent to those formerly treated as passive bodies.

Although we are told that Rykener wears women's clothing and appears for all intents and purposes as a woman, there is no record of how Rykener looked. However, we have sufficient evidence to know that she turned heads. From her confession, we know that John Britby was not the first man (or woman) to turn about and give Rykener a second look. Furthermore, she not only made them look twice but she could hold their look long enough to receive sexual advances, gifts, and payment. She was beheld by the cisgender men but by her beauty she actively held onto them. "Beauty," writes Garland-Thomson, "is a perceptual process and a transitive action: it catches interest, prompts judgement, encourages scrutiny, creates knowledge" (Garland-Thomson, 187). Recognizing the beauty of Rykener is to recognize her power and the way transgender can turn power dynamics. In his cisgender turn, Britby does not mere stare at Rykener in a way that only degrades and mocks her. Certainly he objectifies her. He may be said to exploit her body. Yet to see Rykener only as such an object is to ignore how her beauty held power over others. She creates and exploits his interests and desires for her. She prompts him to judge her as worthy of payment. She uses the power of her beauty to inform him that she has will, agency and demands that consent be established. 

Tying consent to payment, the transgender turn on the cisgender gaze emphasizes how consent evidences a sort of collaboration, where one party exists, "in unison with" or "agrees" to work with the other. Consent and payment is one way the transgender turn works with and even accomplishes some of the desire of the cisgender turn. The demand for and exchange of money does represent one way that the cisgender patriarchy has domineered and exploited the body of women and especially trans women, past and present. Yet the narrative of victimhood that often frames the discussion of sex workers, including Rykener, may dangerously reduce the flow of power to a unidirectional current from a cisgender subject to a transgender object. The interrogation records that Britby did not offer Rykener money. She requested it before she would consent. This signals the existence of cis-misogynistic assumptions about power at play when Britby turns on Rykener. The cisgender turn assumes the passivity of the transgender body, allowing cisgender subjects to look at the trans object, to use the transgender object as a tool or instrument towards some end which the cisgender subject desires, and in the end to narrate the encounter in ways that benefit the cisgender subject. But the demand for payment evidences that Rykener knows that the cisgender agent wants to use her. It is an important turning point that she sees being used by cisgender persons as labor in which she is an active participant. She rejects passivity and collaboration. In "Beholding," Garland-Thomson discusses the theories of Elaine Scarry, and the "compact between starer and staree [which] is not static but collaborative" (Garland-Thomson, 187). Looking is not just something the cisgender agent does on his own. Rykener is active in the exchange, she owns her look and uses her look. The exchange of money is representative of that likewise, sex is not something that a man simply does to a woman or a cis person does to a trans person. Sex is collaborative. Yet given the power dynamics, the sex is collaborative but not a collaboration between equals. The trans woman is being exploited (from the moment he turned on her to the time spent in the horse stall) and wants compensation for that exploitation.

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The Cisgender Turn: John Britby's View of Eleanor Rykener

"Qui quidem Johannes Britby inde allocutus fatebatur quod ipse per vicum regium de Chepe die dominica inter horas supradictas transiens, dictum Johannem Rykener vestitu muliebri ornatum, ipsumque mulierem fore suspicantem fuerat assecutus, petens ab eo, tanquam a muliere, si cum ea libidinose agere possit."

The Interrogation of Eleanor Rykener
London 1394

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Introduction

On December 11th, John Britby (Johannes Britby) claims to have been walking down Cheap Street around 8:00-9:00 P.M., where and when he turned on and accosted (petere) a local person, Eleanor Rykener (recorded also as John Rykener by the scribe of the account). He affirms that she presented as a woman and indeed that he considered her a woman. Britby solicited Rykener for sex work. He paid her and they went to a local horse stall to complete the transaction. Soon after, they were both turned on and accosted by local law enforcement, then brought to court. Therein Britby told his story and how he viewed the case of Eleanor Rykener.

This is the story of Eleanor Rykener from John Britby's perspective and it is important to consider. First, it is socially important to also recognize that before Rykener is allowed to enact her agency in the exchange with Britby, he is the one to accost her. He turns on her before she can turn on him or even turn back on herself to set limits and costs for her body. Second, it is narratively important to recognize that before Rykener is allowed to tell her own history, the cisgender man gets to speak first. Before the transgender turn to the story, we get the cisgender turn.

The first interaction between Britby and Rykener is the man's accosting of the trans woman. In Latin, the word used is "petere." This means "to ask, to seek, to pursue" but also "to desire, to attack." According to Britby's story, it was him as the cisgender man who enacted the initial blow of power that set the rest of the events into motion. He sees her. He approaches her. He talks to her. He promises money. He takes her away to a private place. He presumably touches her body, in ways not disclosed. Then he is the first person allowed to speak in the courtroom. Consistently, the cisgender man is the one driving events as well as driving the narrative.

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Accosting

How may this cisgender turn on the medieval trans woman be qualified? Unpacking the word "petere" can help demonstrate the way that medieval cisgender approached medieval transgender. In the first case, the pre-modern cisgender perspective begins by asking the question: who are you? Or, perhaps more accurately: who are you to me? Britby wants to know if she will be his sexual partner for the evening. Will she take on that role for him? This cisgender man is the one who gets to set the terms and premises of the exchange with transgender people. In a cis-normative world and a patriarchal world, this is the logical order of events. 

Britby is the one who seeks out Rykener. It must be admitted that later generations might never have known the story of a medieval trans woman without a medieval cis man seeking her out. The cisgender man has the power to move across social boundaries, into the margins of Cheap Street, and bring a trans woman out from the shadows of obscurity into the light of legal and historical analysis. 

Britby also may be said to pursue Rykener. She is not willing to go with him right away but demands payment. He provides this monetary incentive, showing that her resistance or hesitation is not enough to dissuade him. Even after he seeks and finds her, Britby will continue to pursue her. Britby pursues her because the cisgender man desires the trans woman. He does not have her currently in his life. Whether he is without any women's company at home or whether he simply desires the particular company of a trans woman, Britby desires Rykener. This desire is worth emphasizing. There is something a cisgender life lacks that a transgender life can offer, even if in this case it may have been something a cis woman could also offer. Yet despite have the trans woman having the power of attraction, the cis man has the power to act on his desire, overcoming boundaries and resistance to do so. 

Given this power differential, the potential for "petere" to mean "to attack" is worth consideration as well. The translation as "accost" gives some sense of Britby's actions as a sort of attack, assault, or harassment. Even if the cisgender man approached her with all intended politeness, the situation he establishes between the cis man and the trans woman, as well as the exchange he proposes between them serves to underline that he has power that she does not have. Presumably, he wishes to touch her body. She demands money, meaning that she might otherwise refuse without him overcoming this defense with payment. Regardless of whether sexual penetration occurs, the historically defining act of Eleanor Rykner's story is that of a cisgender man penetrating her life, agency, and potentially (likely) also her body.

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The Story of John Britby

I will argue in the next section on "the Scribe" of Eleanor Rykener's story that the Cisgender Turn of history reflects and repeats in the archives the accosting that Britby enacts in person. But before we move on to considering the legacy of the cisgender turn, it is necessary to acknowledge that the story of Eleanor Rykener is not told by her for the most part. Yes, the document includes her confession. Yet the writer is a cisgender man (presumably) and the first person to ever tell her story in the document is another cisgender man. Historians and literary analysts must note how having a cisgender man be the first to tell a trans woman's story will prejudice the telling and receiving of this story. He has a power to speak that she lacks. Yes, she will speak. But her words will always come second to his. The view of the court will be affected and so will generations of historians afterwards, no matter how they might try to forget, by the languages and assumptions that a cisgender man will make about a trans woman. We may move forward and emphasize the medieval transgender voice but this transgender turn will always ever come after the cisgender turn.

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The Cisgender Turn: The Scribe's View of Eleanor Rykener

"...pro seperali examinatione coram dictis maiore et aldermannis super premissa fienda et audienda etcetera."

The Interrogation of Eleanor Rykener
London 1394

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Introduction

On December 11th, the scribe of the Plea and Memoranda Roll A34, m2, observed and composed the interrogation of Eleanor Rykener and John Britby. Unlike John Britby who only recounts his turn upon Rykener, the scribe maintains a longer gaze and records multiple turns in her life story. The scribe is not named within the text but his presence and actions are made evident by the document he composes.

Considering the scribe as a viewpoint given for Eleanor Rykener is important in two respects. First, it acknowledges that the document which records the interrogation is not unbiased and neutral. The text has a subjective view point, embodied, composed, and facilitated by the scribe. It is likely that the scribe would have been male and would have been cisgender. Even if he was not, his text demonstrates features that follow cisgender conventions. The scribe participates in and reinforces the cisgender turn even if he himself was not cisgender. Second, by marking the scribe as an active subjective cisgender viewpoint, this brings the habits and alliances of subsequent scholarship by cisgender medievalists into a new light. For instance, if the trans woman calls herself Eleanor but the cisgender scribe calls her John, then generations of scholars call her John, this suggests an impulse among cis scholars to take the word of a cis scribe over that of a medieval trans woman.

Just like the scribe writes himself out of the record, the scribe also participates in unwriting, unspeaking, and un-transing transgender from the medieval record. By considering the relevance of the unspeakable vice, the "nephandum," we can understand how medieval trans lives are made inarticulate and insubstantial by scribes and scholars that articulate cis history (cistory) at the expense of trans history.

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Un-Speaking

Cisgender history (cistory) has made much of sodomy and transgender being unspeakable, what the scribe calls, "nephandum." Yet the inability for speech and language is not essential to either the sexual acts or gendered being of Eleanor Rykener. Rather, this silence demonstrates the way in which trans language has been disabled by the cisgender turn. Cisgender history (cistory) is thus a work of composition which comes into being as much by what is selected for inclusion or articulation as what is excluded. In this way, cistory is like the image of the woman picking dicks from a tree in another infamous medieval manuscript. Such an image represents how the cisgender turn sees all fruit as penises ripe for the picking but ignores both the other fruits, the other possible interpretations of the strange fruit, and the pickers who is forgotten in favor of penises they pick. Everything looks like a nail from the point of view of a hammer. Everyone with a penis looks like cisgender men from the point of view of a cisgender man, including a transgender woman. Such a perspective and account must then be considered not as an unbiased and neutral recording of history but as the subjective construction of cis history through the un-transing of trans history which is rendered unspeakable.

In the first case, the cisgender turn cannot articulate language for transgender because of a certain surprise which indicates both disgust and desire. This surprise is evident in the various genres in which transgender tends to be represented in cisgender media, all of which incite the body in some way, called body genres: horror (fear), detective stories (anxiety/suspense), pornography (arousal), and comedy (laughter). We see how this impulse is present both in the presumably cisgender scribe and cisgender scholar of Eleanor Rykener when Carolyn Dinshaw argues that the Plea and Memoranda roll has all the characteristics of a "fabliau." In cisgender literature in the Middle Ages and today, it is a given that there is something funny about realizing that one's sexual partner is a trans woman. Yet the courtroom setting of the interrogation also suggests something of a crime procedural and detective story, as the scribe records how the cis man and trans woman were detected, "detectus," by law enforcers. This suggests a sort of anxiety or suspense which the confessions will resolve. Yet the sexual exchange at the center of the interrogation also reflects the pornographic genre of the text. Not only is the unspeakable vice being named, it is being elaborated to an extreme degree by Rykener's prolonged confession wherein she names her numerous partners. The scribe's recording becomes something like the writing of an erotica as he puts Rykener's numerous unspeakable acts into language. Indeed, even the interrogation of her gender as a trans woman demonstrates the cisgender turns unspoken interest in her embodiment. Does the scribe look at her and describe her with anxiety or fear? His choice of Latin suggests an ambivalence in regards to pronouns, as Latin allows him to compose her story with minimal references to her gender. Is he aroused by her speaking the unspeakable? Is he amused or laughing? If the word unspeakable, "nephandum," is truly central to the scribe's view of Eleanor Rykener, then it is a word that defines how the cisgender turn often stands wordlessly stunned and affected by the transgender body.

In the second case, the cisgender turn composes the transgender life as unspeakable because cis scribes and scholars do not want to have to find a way to speak (or read) trans life. Transgender is made unspeakable, "nephandum," in cistory. Then insofar as it finds its way into cistory, transgender becomes un-transed. The scribe participates in this un-transing by identifying Eleanor Rykener primarily by her deadname, John Rykener, "Johannes Rykener." Although she introduces herself into the record as Eleanor, "Elianoram," the scribe choses to name her previously as John and then to repeat the name John no less than twenty-five times. Thus, despite the ambivelence that the scribe records regarding Rykener's gender and pronouns, the name, "John," is unambiguously decided upon by the scribe. It might be argued that the scribe was compelled by the societal norms and language, giving him no extant alternatives. Or that the scribe was compelled by the professional and legal demands of his job to refer to Rykener by her name of record. Yet that defense would only further emphasize how the scribe's view of Eleanor Rykener participates in the cisgender turn. The suggestion that the scribe was compelled by preexisting conditions which default to cisgender standards and erase, exclude, or correct transgender facts demonstrates how the cisgender turn is a powerful idealogical force. Transgender people in the twenty-first century still have to deal with medical and legal authorities referring to them by their deadname because of the excuse or compulsion to use the given name of record. A trans person's deadname is given to them first and their chosen transgender name is given second. Chronologically, the cisgender name gets its turn first and the transgender name gets its turn second. But the insistence on the deadname even after the trans person corrects the record, such as when Rykener names herself as Eleanor for the court, demonstrates how the cisgender turn is an active force that distorts the facts in order to bring them in line with cisgender standards. Eleanor Rykener is un-transed by the record into being John. Cisgender scholars, even queer cis scholars, further participate in the cisgender turn by following the naming conventions of the scribe, likewise calling Rykener, "John," despite Eleanor's recorded act of self-naming. Cistorians prefer to follow the pattern of cis authorities and scribes rather than follow those offered by trans persons. This is why cistory is not merely history written by cis people. If history is the ideal presentation of the past as it was, this is not what cis scribes and scholars do by manipulating facts and narratives to fit into cisgender norms. Rather, the warping and un-transing of the past to accord with cisgender stories and histories is not history but cistory. Perhaps the transgender turn likewise presents a subjective view-point in contradicting and correcting the cisgender turn, yet meeting turn for turn will be necessary if we are ever to begin to see the ways cistory has warped our collective histories and made our past unspeakable.

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