Scars of the Pardoner: A Physician's Tale (Part 1/5)

"I rose from the doctor's slab...
Now everybody gets to take a stab,
they cut me up into parts"

Hedwig's Lament
Hedwig and the Angry Inch

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“Don’t you think we think too much about gender?” a doctor once asked me at the start of a routine physical. As one of a few transgender patients in this Polish doctor’s Chicagoland practice, I couldn’t help suspecting that I was receiving questions that he didn’t ask everyone. He asked his question again, compelling a complicit silence, while informing me that he would neither enforce nor assist in any work of reconstructing sex.[i] He admitted that there are doctors who would prescribe whatever patients requested, “just to get their money,” but he didn’t want them to “take advantage” of me. This led him to repeat his thesis a third time, “don’t you think we think too much about gender?”

This is perhaps an imprudent question to ask a scholar ready to offer her body as testimony against attempts to cut up and cut off vulnerable communities. “I rose from off of the doctor's slab, like Lazarus from the pit,” I hummed to myself from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, “Now everyone wants to take a stab, and decorate me with blood graffiti and spit.”[ii] He kept working to enlist me to support his narrative of progress in which we are now in a post-gender era where sexism can finally be forgotten as a relic of the past. I sat there contemplating all the doctors meetings that relate my story to Hedwigs’s journey from living as a man in East Germany to living as a woman in the Midwest United States, tales where bodies are made into metaphors for severed lives, “standing...in the divide / Between east and west / Slavery and freedom / Man and woman, top and bottom,” and how this narrative work has propelled our construction as operatives in a genealogy of castration that draws itself across our collective skin as the scars of stolen histories.[iii] 

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This exchange is not only between two individuals, but competing narrative approaches to reconstructing the body and its history. On the one hand, this physician’s approach to history testifies that the trans body is not self-evident but stolen time and time again to serve narratives of progress. It aspires to tell me that the conversation on sex was over before I arrived, that we are now in a post-sexism, post-transsexual era, cutting me off from affecting surgical access to my body and voicing a counter-history. Progressive models of the body use many narrative tropes but a lasting marker remains the shift from pre-operation (pre-op) status, signifying the past, to a post-operation (post-op) status, signifying the present. This approach to history claims to move society forward by putting things in the past; as though history was some sort of waste bin where parts of our body and community can be left to erode into nothingness and forgotten.

The division of bodies and the erasure of the past has since become signatures of trans bodies in narrative. In the 1950s, doctors developed the language of pre- and post-op in what Sandy Stone describes as part of a clinical “strategy of building barriers within a single subject.”[iv] As genitals underwent operation to bring that body in line with the prescribed gender, clinic’s “charm school” taught transsexual and intersex persons to continue to performatively expunge parts of their history that did not fit in with their future.[v] Thus, while such operations became less compulsory in the ‘90s, trans persons internalized these divides, treating gender transition as a cure to a personal and social disease, the weight of which they must increasingly manage alone.[vi] In this era, doctors indirectly deploy trans bodies as operatives to pardon the wounds of violent pasts while using their metaphor-laden scars to enforce segregation. These cuts do not simply take away but add barriers between man and woman, control and freedom, past and future. 

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In contrast to this narrative of progress, I sat in this doctor’s office representing the persistence of scarred skin, inextricable from histories of castration, slavery, and rape where bodies are stolen and torn open, insisting on more critical attention, alliance, and liberation across attempts to cut up and periodize our existence into manageable and disposable parts. I respond the question posed by the progressive model of the body and history, “don’t you think we think too much about gender?” by demonstrating that attempts to cut bodies into a pre- and post-op periods fail to account for the continued presence and activity of the parts that are supposed to be eliminated by the operation These progressive histories are not without their usefulness and yet the distinctions drawn between periods must be understood as a construct of historicization that polices artificial divides between communities that exist within a trans-historical continuum. 

This study begins with a brief genealogy of castration stretching from late the Middle Ages into a wider array of medical, religious, legal and social operations aimed at erasing problematic parts of the past. It is the repetition of this breaking from the past that helps establish progressive histories that divide pre-modern castrates from post-modern transsexuals. While this study concentrates on the genealogy of the “castrate”[vii] those that have undergone castration as part of their physical and social reconstruction, this critical trans project aims to consider how the work of progressive histories of the body encompass a wider array of scars. I will utilize the term “operative” for bodies undergoing surgical reconstructions, drawing on the wider implications of notions of pre- and post-operation.[viii] The rape of women, the surgical or chemical castration of people of color, the genital mutilation of queer bodies, and the butchery of non-human animals are all parts in the construction of progressive timelines and a critical trans history. 

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I utilize Sandy Stone’s seminal transgender studies essay, “The Empire Strike Back: a Post-Transsexual Manifesto” to argue for a “trans-operative” tension between the practices that surgically construct the human and the fragmented bodies that pose resistance to “erased history” through the affirmation of their past wounds, the scars that division leaves, and the potential for a recollection of the disparate parts and persons in a critical trans-historical collective.[ix] I look to castrates as models of progressive medical theories, an array of bodies, physically or symbolically constructed by what Judith Butler calls “sharp machines” or “the technology of the knife” to serve as metaphors for divided histories, arguing that “trans-operative” better describes the continuum of bodies existing across these events of social redefinition.[x] While castrates have been used as metaphors of a fragmented past that gives way to an imagined wholeness, this symbolic resolution continues to be disturbed by the presence of operative flesh, which, like scar-tissue, demands a place in our history as the remnants of violent politics of cultural castration. 

In the lasts section, I turn to the cutting and cut-up flesh of Fragment VI in Geoffrey Chaucer’s the Canterbury Tales, a problematic work providing two tales of the potential repercussions of rape, murder, and castration that flow from the reconstructive power of the blade.[xi] By drawing out how the progressive medical approach of “the Physician’s Tale” frames “the Pardoner’s Tale,” establishing Virginia as a representative of the surgical logic at work in the 14th century, I reopen up texts and bodies which have already drawn critical attention on matters of gender and articulate how the Pardoner’s bloody knife work and relics respond to this model by calling for a trans-historical reassessment of trans-operative bodies, those moving between operations of the past and present, to counter the progressive histories they have been made to service.

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Part 2: A History of Castration
Part 3: The Trans-Operative
Part 4: The Physician's Surgery
Part 5: The Pardoner's Scars

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[i] I initially replied that working in gender studies I believe I am professionally compelled to answer, “No” to that question. He did not find this funny.
[ii] Trask and Mitchell. “Tear Me Down.” Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
[iii] Trask and Mitchell. “Tear Me Down.”
[iv] Sandy Stone. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-Transsexual Manifesto.” The Transgender Studies Reader. Stryker, Susan ed. N.Y.: Routledge, 2006. 226.
[v] Stone. “The Empire Strikes Back,” 227.
[vi] Stone. “The Empire Strikes Back,” 221-229.
[vii] Kathryn Reusch. “Raised Voices: The Archeology of Castration.” Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages. Larissa Tracy ed. Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd. 2013. 31.
[viii] In moving from “operation” to “operative” I intend first to break from the binary of operator/operated to suggest that all bodies are operative(s): first, as an adjective to denote an ongoing state of productive functioning, especially in relation to surgery, and, second, as a worker, especially relating to manufacturing and political agencies. The mutation into “trans-operative” asserts that the processes and states are in a continually state of flux across definitive borders of identity.
[ix] Stone. “The Empire Strikes Back,” 230.
[x] Judith Butler. “Doing Justice to Someone: A Transsexual Allegory.” The Transgender Studies Reader. Stryker, Susan ed. N. Y.: Routledge, 2006. 187.
[xi] Chaucer, Geoffrey, and Larry D. Benson. “The Pardoner's Introduction, Prologue and Tale.” The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

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Trans Space: Exploring Lady Gaga's Transgender G.U.Y.

"I'm in charge like a G.U.Y.

I'll lay down, face up this time"

Lady Gaga

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New and Exciting Positions

I first heard Lady Gaga's "G.U.Y." from her ArtPop album, while on a train from Prague to a nearby suburb in November 2013. The high concept of the album sets the listener on an allegorical space journey, encountering aliens and goddesses along the way who promise  sexual transformation through the exploration of "new and exciting positions." Experiencing the album while on a queer adventure of my own, the music gave a voice to many of the subtextual forces already at work around me, reorienting my body and denaturalizing my social relations. Being marked as a transgender woman and identifying as politically trans, at home in Washington DC I often find myself positioned in an indeterminate middle space between places that govern sexual identity. Where I am supposed to go to the bathroom, change in a locker room, buy my clothes, go to meet singles or go on dates are in a state of perpetual social questioning or uncertainty. It all depends on the context of a discourses on gender in that community. Music and music plays no small role in developing this imagined sensed of an ordered place or a space of queer wanderings. Given that force, I was attentive to the music of Prague as I negotiated my arrival into new cultural soundscapes.

In ideology of place, where identities and geographic features are established as relatively static structures, one expects to move about as a passive recipient to power. Neoliberal capitalism has helped develop this docility in our bodies through the deployment of "guides" that direct and order our movements. In the case of G.U.Y., our guide is none other than Eros himself, "God of sexual desire, son of Aphrodite." G.U.Y.'s opening plays on expectations for submission by bringing out their erotic undertones. "Lay back," recites the narrator, "and feast as this audio guides you through new and exciting positions." At this point the listener's attention may be roused. Passivity usually comes along with the promise of security. We follow the architecture of power so we can depend on its strength to keep us on safe routes. By bringing us into "new" paths, the familiar places will be left behind and we may find our bodies put in dangerous positions. Whether this is frightening or simply arousing, the prospect is exciting!

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Sub Space Travel

"Leading from below" is a political concept developed within certain strains of feminism that oppose the mere replacement of men with women within the positions of power, choosing to destabilize the structure of hierarchy on the grounds that women (along with many other marginalized communities) will continue to suffer violence so long as the apparatuses of governance are structured as such. This subversive theory of socio-sexual dynamics has since exploded within queer and kink communities, where the position of the penetrated, called "the bottom," maintains strategic power in the community.  "Touch me, touch me, don't be sweet," begs Gaga, asserting that it is the bottom sets the terms of the encounter, the limits and safe words, while bestowing on "the top" the means to act on their bodies. It is not simply that the top who gives and the bottom who receives, but the flow of force runs both ways. "Let me be the girl under you that makes you cry," insists Gaga. Instead of a passive reception of the apparatuses of pain, pleasure, and power the framework of bottoming transforms the tools that put bodies in a specific "place" into the dynamic and negotiated work of sharing intimate "space."

The transformation of social relations do not leave bodies and identities unchanged, but are integral in a critical trans politics that seeks to liberate the mechanisms through which the self is constructed and performed. By becoming the enactor of power, the girl becomes the guy in Gaga's sexual revolution. "I'm going to wear the tie," asserts Gaga, "want the power to leave you." The new and exciting positions we explore are not merely restricted to the bedroom but alter how we structure our body through the reclamation of clothes and liberties. Likewise, politics can never be merely personal but have social repercussions. "Know," warns Gaga, "you will wear my makeup well." After knowing the exchange of positions in a carnal mode, the act marks a body with a knowledge forbidden by normative sexual restrictions. Neither a man nor a woman enters into a position naturally nor can their place we so naturalized that they can explore new dimensions without it affecting their experience of lived space. The change gets embedded in the "makeup" of their body, whether or not it is accompanied by the markers of cosmetic makeup. In fact, the critical trans exchange of gender positions and compositions is an ongoing process that Gaga knows well.

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G.I.R.L. Underneath You

Lady Gaga has a history of trans identifying as a guy or G.U.Y. When she hit the music scene with Fame and Fame Monster, the media had begun circulating rumors that she was transgender. Specifically, the claim was that Lady Gaga, a female pop-singer, had a penis. These suspicions were fueled by the adaption of many drag performance traditions into Gaga's act as well as an open support for queer and L.G.B.T. politics. The singer responded to these allegations in the music video for "Telephone." At the opening of the video, Gaga is stripped naked and thrown into a jail cell. As the correction officers lock the door and walk off, Gaga jumps at the bars, spreading her legs open for the camera, revealing a censored but recognizable vulva (and no penis). In case viewers miss the message, one of the two butch correction officers comments to the others, "I told you she didn't have a dick" to which the other replies, "too bad."

By Lady Gaga's next album, Born This Way, Gaga's became committed to more overt pro-L.G.B.T. politics, stated explicitly in the album's title track. Despite claiming this agenda, most of the album's music still kept pretty normative in terms of representations of gender and sexual. The notable exception came through Gaga's new persona, "Jo Calderone," in "You and I" for the accompanying music video and its live performance at the Video Music Awards. In short-black hair, a white t-shirt, and black pants, Jo sneered at audiences of the VMAs and reminisced about a failed romance with Lady Gaga. Writer J. Jack Halberstam, while admitting to not be a particular fan of Lady Gaga's music, praised the disruptive effect of taking on the masculine persona in his book Gaga Feminism. Jo's presence so shook and delighted reviewers with such artificial authenticity, that they began again to question Gaga's gender and sexual identity. More than an identification as transgender or a drag king, Halberstam argues, the indeterminacy of gender and realness liberated conceptions of both.

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G.U.Y. I Romance & Love

Coming into ArtPop, Lady Gaga had been identified, unindentified, and then performatively re-appropriated her guyness. All of this history was brought to bear on listeners when G.U.Y. was released as the third single and second music video to be released from the album. In the lyrics, Gaga claims the title "Guy" for herself but transforms its meaning in the process. "I want to be the Girl underneath you," she sings, "I want to be your G.U.Y." By embedding the description of a submissive, traditionally feminine sexual position in the word guy, Gaga articulates her manhood as coincident with the position of women. In the first case, this continues an identification that Gaga has long established with the gay-male community. She likes to be a bottom, being penetrated, by men, like some gay men. Here identity is not an essential category of being but a common position. In the second case, the movement goes the other way. A guy can share the feminine (or gay) position adopting it as a critical politics. At once a girl within the term of Guys and a guy in a woman's position, G.U.Y. suggests that it is more important what (or who) you put between your legs, than what happens to be there from birth.

In particular, G.U.Y. explores new positions in sexual relation, by proposing new understandings of two terms of systematic gender, "guy" and "girl." While guy, a product of "bro-culture," has arisen to be a quintessential term for not only cisgender male bodies but masculinity writ large, Gaga breaks the word apart into constitutive letters to mean the "Girl Underneath You." By embedding this act of female sexual submission within the phrase "I want to be your guy," Gaga at once asserts an identification with women, transmen, and gay men. Likewise, she takes a common term of sexual condescension, "girl," and reworks it to mean the "Guy I Romance & Love." Here the objectification associated with the term "girl" and the male gaze is shattered by the female and queer look. This crossing of gender markers has further substantial affects on the proposed sexual positions being proposed. "I'm going to say the word," sings Gaga, "and own you, you'll be my G.I.R.L." Rather than taking the position of being "the girl underneath you" as a position of submission, Gaga demonstrates how you can lead from below. In the process, G.U.Y. puts forth a critical trans politics that is not interested in simply disturbing the architecture of identity and place, or in creating separate alternative cultural locations, but demonstrating how these structures are already being adapted to serve a more dynamic flow of space, the song works to open up "new and exciting" possibilities.

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Watch the ArtPop video to discover 

new and exciting positions

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The Morpheus Database: the Material Life of Data

"A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing"

Andrew Lang

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Coming Soon...

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