it is now fair to say that andrea long chu is one of the most fearless writers of our generation. she is scribbling takes inflammatory to literally everyone, letting no one off the hook. esp. not herself. (though she should cut herself some slack).
this article is revelatory. it is thoroughly-researched and extraordinarily thoughtful. it breathes more nuance into the conversation of transwomanhood than any other single work in the last 20 yrs.
the way she talks about "being a boy" is crazy daring. she is diving headfirst, totally unafraid, into the most uncomfortable discussion in transness: how do we acknowledge our experiences as the first gender assigned to us?
the regressive narrative of "being born a boy in a woman's body" or vice-versa only furthers ideas of gender essentialism, like: "you
can be innately man or innately woman," which is the whole thing we're trying to disprove. but every trans woman has spent time as, ontologically, practically, a boy, and every trans man has spent time as a woman. not because it's what they "are," but because it is both how they were treated and what they knew to be true at the time.
in fact, acknowledging that i understand many of the experiences of boyhood is the best jumping off point for how i can emphasize how much of a woman i am. those disorienting experiences of expectation and inadequacy are ultimately really useful for approaching gender going forward. why would i dismiss them and pretend i don't know what it's like to be a boy? our superpower is that
we do know what it's like to be "the other one!"
so when she talks about the horror of being a boy, of walking around
as a boy, she nails transness. and instead of undermining our womanness, it only proves our capacity to grow and fulfill the best version fo ourselves.
i've been thinking a lot recently about gender (shocking!!) and have smugly settled on some terms i'm eager to show off:
diagnostic and
prescriptive gender. it feels like these terms bridge the gap and bring clarity to a lot of confusing trans discourse. not to pat myself on the back but i'm paving the way for the new generation with this blog.
diagnostic gender is the process of running "diagnostic tests", like a buzzfeed personality quiz, to determine an output that is either Man or Woman, that concludes you are of the Masculine or of the Feminine, presumably informed by your early childhood experiences, "genetic personality", etc.
prescriptive gender is the process of choosing the gender you
identify with— the set of attitudes, ethics, and aesthetics that you admire and want to be. it is the vow of reaching towards Masculinity of Femininity, of "becoming" a man or a woman.
here are some cool ideas in action:
transphobes assume that prescriptive gender—the reach for an identity— is bogus, and that the spiritual quest of ideals cannot be legitimate. But the world was split, destroyed, and rebuilt by people reaching for divine Christianity without ever "embodying Christ" so clearly our aspirations of what we want to be like do tend to define us. andrea long chu seems to suggest that prescriptive gender is all there is— that Womanhood is only the reach for womanhood. this might
andrea long chu believes the opposite, and that prescriptive gender is all there is— any diagnostic work is inevitably clouded by our prescriptive biases, and the reach for Womanhood is in fact Womanhood. this is optimistic if applied to cis people, that cis men are ontologically men because each day they strive to be men. but it also refuses to admit that were these men to simply decide to be women, there would be some catching up to do in attitude / ethics / aesthetics, and they would have to relearn a lot about how to interact with people.
i think everyone's gender identity is a combination of both diagnostic and prescriptive choices. cis people are people who don't allow themselves the prescriptive gender, because they feel they are ruled and limited wholly by the diagnostic gender + their genitals— or they use the prescriptive gender to augment or supplement their "diagnosis."
anyway, props to ALC for the fantastic article, right? that's what i thought a hefty 4/5 through the article. 80% amazing, that's a B+, so right before the finish line, why does she have to ruin it?
the last paragraph reeks of the kind of
transpessimism she imbued a theatrically depressing article in the NYT. that article is guilty of the navel-gazing woe-is-me self-pity that
she (justly and satisfyingly) attacked Jill Solloway for. maybe i'm not getting it, but to me it reads as Lena Dunham-gone-trans— it has the defiantly raw, uncompromisingly intimate style of millenial internet lit which weaponizes vulnerability to affront its reader. it posits transness as a losing battle that is waged at the world from birth, a cursed condition that must be reckoned with as long as our society lives under the specter of a binary. and of course there is truth here, and her experience— which is also exquisitely rendered— is good to have out there. but articles like these are necessary only as points of reference: here is trans pain at its most vivid. so when it shows up in the NYT, largely devoid of other trans viewpoints, it twists the 21st century trans woman into a frightening self-destructive spectacle.
how does andrea long chu, electric-joan-of-arc-as-brooklyn-intellectual, fall into the same traps as every 60+ neolib queer? she equates gender dysphoria with
body dysphoria, conflates the desire for vagina with the desire for womanhood. she completely neglects to explore engaging with womanhood nonclinically:
to engage with womanhood or to live as a woman means to interpolate the attitudes, aesthetics, and ethics of Femininity— according to your culture / community— into yourself. just as being a Goth means participating in Gothdom, being a woman means participating in Womanness: listening to other women, supporting the work and art and lives of other women, contributing to the universe of Women. andrea long chu seems to miss this fundamentally in her lonely reach for Womanhood.
i'd love to have coffee with her. she is the ta-nehisi coates to my cornel west. and i know what you're thinking: asher, how are you about to pull an andrea long chu and ruin your entire post with a deeply problematic comparison between you, a successful, educated trans writer, and then two of the most important and brilliant living intellectuals in the field of social theory and racial justice?
anyway, andrea long chu's killer jill solloway take-down sent me down a wormhole of
articles about journalism and the
ethics of the
hit piece, and it reminded me of a moment that in retrospect probably defined my understanding of american celebrity:
watching this just
unbelievably dismal piece on chevy chase.
everything here is bad vibes. it's literally only negative energy— the ruthless mythologizing by both the interviewer and chevy himself, the easy bait, the eagerness with which chevy takes the bait... bewildered commentors appropriately pointed out its strangely resentful attitude.
and which is more depressing: a.) chevy, so decrepit he is quaking out of fear or newly-developed
essential tremor, or b.) chevy, as some theories suggest, so paranoid about misrepresentation that he spills water on his belly to expose potential continuity errors in editing?
the things is though: you almost can't help but sympathize with chevy. we are all familiar with the moment of losing an argument, realizing you are wrong, and confronting the choice to either admit defeat & apologize, or double down on your argument, knowing you are being petty and unreasonable, and dig yourself in further. he has existed perpetually at this point, and has chosen, without falter to double down. it is car crash compelling to see him make this choice time after time when he is consistently given opportunities to redeem himself.
on the other end of the spectrum, take a look at
this profile on brandon wardell, which is like the crude opposite of a hit piece— this journalist was hired to be flirted at by brandon wardell and then write an
extensive riff off a twitter joke he made about himself in which he was designated a resolute "cutie", a label that ostensibly relieves you of any social or legal consequence.
you think that's grim? just you wait till brandon wardell publicly declares
his her strive towards womanhood.
