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autolenaphilia · 1 year

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I’m very happy to see some discussion on my dash of the original Frankenstein novel. It's one of my favourite books. And it reminds me how much i hate the anti-science reading of Frankenstein so much. You know the one. Frankenstein’s crime is that he strives for knowledge and power that belongs only to God/nature. The quest for knowledge man is not meant to know, power man is not meant to have. It’s a downright reactionary argument. And of course 70s hippies recuperated anti-technology/science arguments from conservatives and made them supposedly “leftist” or “progressive, as I discussed before. So naturally we get cringeworthy “feminist” anti-science interpretations of Frankenstein. It tends to go like this: Victor is suffering from womb envy. He can not create life the natural way, so in his hubris he does a monstrous imitation of it via technology.

Of course, there is an obvious bio-essentialism to this feminist interpretation of the novel. Womanhood is identified with a (fertile) womb. And there is a kind of cultural feminism to this interpretation, where gender roles are reaffirmed but the feminine role is upheld as superior to the male one. So women are identified with motherhood and nature, and men with science and technology, but it’s feminist because science and technology are seen as evil.

So if you are capable of critical thinking, you might notice this kind of “feminism” smells terfy. Like actually gives off terf vibes, not in the “talking about misogyny is terfy” sense. And you’ll be right. So let’s talk about Mary Daly, who was one of the original terfs. The foundational statement of it as an ideology The Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymondoriginated as a dissertation with Daly as a teacher.

Daly’s book Gyn/Ecology explicitly makes the above “feminist” reading of Frankenstein as part of her broader anti-technology argument, where ecological destruction is due to “male” technology inherently being a destructive “boundary violation” analogous to rape. I discussed before how it’s a “feminist” and “environmentalist” restatement of reactionary catholic writing.

In Daly’s reading Victor Frankeinstein’s “character illustrates the hysteria of the manic mother-mimer who experiences his inherent male sterility as unbearable barrenness.” And in that “hysteria” he tries to become a “technological father” and “scientific sire.” In Daly’s words, “The Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent in… phallocratic technology.” And she of course takes this argument to its natural transmisogynistic conclusion, arguing that “Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes.”

This conclusion is not an aberration, but inherent in the anti-technology and anti-modernity premises Daly works from. If technology is evil and produces only destruction and abominations, perversions of what is natural and thus beautiful, medical transition technology is not an exception. The transsexual body is thus a disgusting aberration. Transphobia and transmisogyny follow naturally from an anti-technology stance.

That is exactly why reading Frankenstein as an anti-science text is dangerous, especially if you argue for that reading as progressive and feminist. There is certainly space for that reading in the text, but it remind us of the dark side of romanticism. Not the gothic horror side of romantic literature, but the reactionary irrationalism and anti-science currents that inflamed so much romantic nationalism and lead to the nazis, who were violently transmisogynistic. If that is all you get out of Frankenstein, that science and knowledge is bad, that is not a progressive or feminist statement, but a reactionary one.

And it’s worrying that a lot of supposedly feminist writers do run with that interpretation, making a repudiation of “male technology” central to Shelley’s novel as a feminist text. It’s even become part of how Frankenstein is viewed as the orgin of science fiction as a genre. The excellent essay Mother Frankenstein by Sabine Sharp has an excellent criticism of such “feminist science fiction history-telling.” In order to refute misogynist claims of science fiction as a male genre, Frankenstein is viewed as the original science fiction novel, and it was written by a woman. This is despite the history of the genre, and indeed Frankenstein’s genre placement being far more complex than that. In such a history, earlier books viewed as science fiction are often dismissed as “fantasy” while carving Frankenstein out of the gothic horror genre.

As Sharp explains “The recognition awarded Frankenstein by feminist science fiction critics is often accompanied by readings of the text as a critique of science, technology and progress…. Science fiction is shown to have a foundation in challenging not only the male dominance of literature – Mary Shelley being one of few women writers in her day – but also of science. “

This reading of Frankenstein and it’s implications for the SF genre are of course bio-essentialist in a Daly-esque manner. “Frankenstein’s spawning of a new genre thus also bolsters a critical feminist position on reproduction and production. Just as Victor Frankenstein is seen to misappropriate the supposedly female reproductive role, so too are subsequent male science fiction writers seen to adopt and dominate the field of science fiction, failing to pay due respect to their maternal ancestry.“

Sharp also criticizes the cultural feminism of such readings of the novel and genre. “This reading of Frankenstein also consolidates the view of science as an inherently masculine realm, a false and shallow substitute for pregnancy and birth” Sharp paraphrases the argument of feminist sf-writer Pamela Sargent who already in 1975 pointed out that this view “has problematic consequences for women’s engagement in science, technology and science fiction.“

So to the extent we read Frankenstein this way, it has to be a very critical reading. But that is not the only reading possible of the text. The interpretations I quoted so far have focused on Victor Frankenstein, and his motivations and hubris in creating the monster. It’s Victor who sees his creation of the monster as his major tragic mistake.

It’s telling that the movie adaptations which focus on Victor’s hubris in playing god and creating life, reduce the monster to a largely non-verbal shambling mess. The epitome of this is not Boris Karloff in the 1931 Frankenstein film, but Christopher Lee in The Curse of Frankenstein from 1957. There Victor as portrayed by Peter Cushing becomes the 20th century pop culture stereotype of the mad scientist villain, fanatical and ruthless in his quest to create life. And the result of his efforts is a gruesome, non-verbal, violent stitched-together mess of a monster.

Yet the monster of the novel is a very complex figure. “Adam” is a highly intelligent and complex character whose monologue dominates large parts of the novel. And of course he is not born evil and violent. He is born innocent, a “tabula rasa.” and then he is made cruel and evil by being completely rejected by humanity, including Victor, his father. He does horrible things, but is also sympathetic.

In the original novel, the complexity of the monster as a character provides room for an alternative reading to the anti-science one. The tragedy of the novel is not that the monster is created, but that Victor abandoned him immediately after creation. It’s that act that puts him irrevocably on a tragic path. His flaw is not one of hubris, of creating life, but an inability to take responsibility for what he created. Victor’s refusal to raise his child turns the child selfish and violent, and with disastrous consequences for both of them. Victor Frankenstein is the ultimate literary deadbeat dad. If you wish to apply it to present-day concerns, take it as a condemnation of men who won’t pay their child support, not scientists doing in-vitro fertilization or trans healthcare.

The monster as a character opens up more interesting themes than the anti-science one. He is not some pale imitation of humanity, he is very much human in both his desires and flaws. The monster is in fact an exploration of the human condition. How the monster is born innocent yet made cruel reflects Shelley’s beliefs about how humans are born a “tabula rasa” and then made evil by how they are treated by a cruel environment. His confusion and rage at his abandonment by his creator is very much an analogy for the human relationship with God. The monster explicitly compares himself with Adam, and Victor with God. The novel is an expression of the questioning of Christian belief in God during and after the age of enlightenment. Frankenstein very much deals with “god’s silence” as Ingmar Bergman would later put it (Bergman could have directed an excellent Frankenstein movie adaptation). How if God exists, he seems to abandoned humanity, allowing humans to suffer. Frankenstein anticipates the existentialist writers thinking about how to live in a world without Christian faith.

The monster is not a mindless thing, but a very human figure. We are meant to see ourselves in him.

And of course, in response to how the figure of Frankenstein’s monster have been used against trans women, we have reclaimed it. The pivotal text in such reclaiming is Susan Stryker’s My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.

“The transsexual body is an unnatural body. It is the product of medical science. It is a technological construction. It is flesh torn apart and sewn together again in a shape other than that in which it was born. In these circumstances, I find a deep affinity between myself as a transsexual woman and the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Like the monster, I am too often perceived as less than fully human due to the means of my embodiment; like the monster’s as well, my exclusion from human community fuels a deep and abiding rage in me that I, like the monster, direct against the conditions in which I must struggle to exist.”

Stryker’s essay is a classic work of transgender theory, of trans women speaking about their own experiences. Just it’s influence on trans readings of the gothic is immense. I provided links to interesting works in this post, but this is the one you should read.

So after all that, let’s return to applying Frankenstein and its themes to present-day trans people. The monster is again an analogy for transness. Victor creating the monster becomes an analogy for doctors doing medical transition. And again it’s not there that Victor makes his mistake, but in afterwards abandoning his monster, and the continuing rejection by humanity the monster experiences. The message is not that creating life via science is bad, it’s that rejecting and mistreating the life created afterwards is evil. And if trans people are the monster in this analogy, the message is clear. It’s not medical transition that is evil, it is the transphobia and transmisogyny trans people experience afterwards, the rejection of trans people by cis people that is the true evil.

#my writings #frankenstein #transmisogyny #susan stryker #(seriously read her essay)

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gazelle-of-the-steppe · 7 months

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"The consciousness shaped by the transsexual body is no more the creation of the science that refigures its flesh than the monster’s mind is the creation of Frankenstein. The agenda that produced hormonal and surgical sex reassignment techniques is no less pretentious, and no more noble, than Frankenstein’s. Heroic doctors still endeavor to triumph over nature. The scientific discourse that produced sex reassignment techniques is inseparable from the pursuit of immortality through the perfection of the body[...]. Its genealogy emerges from a metaphysical quest older than modern science, and its cultural politics are aligned with a deeply conservative attempt to stabilize gendered identity in service of the naturalized heterosexual order."

—Susan Stryker, My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix

#quote #trans history #frankenstein #horror #queerness #ancient history #trans #susan stryker #history #trans medical care #medical history #heteronormativity #queer theory #queer #i love this quote so much i think about it at least 4 times a day #susan stryker you will always be famous TO ME

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nerdygaymormon · 1 year

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#susan stryker #queerstake #trans #fireside with blair hodges

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transbookoftheday · 11 months

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Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution by Susan Stryker

Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-'70s to 1990, the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the '90s and '00s.

Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture.

#transgender history: the roots of today's revolution #transgender history #susan stryker #transfem #transmasc #nonbinary #trans book of the day #trans books #queer books #bookblr #booklr

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corvidinthewoods · 2 years

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“You told me I couldn’t live as a gay man, but now I am going to die like one.”

ive been reading Susan Stryker’s Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution and was brought to tears by this quote from Lou Sullivan. He was a gay trans man who threw himself into community activism, including for removing “homosexual orientation” as a contraindication from the DSM criteria for Gender Identity Disorder. His goal was achieved, but unfortunately he at some point contracted HIV and ultimately died of an AIDS-associated pneumonia before he could see it.

#crow.txt #lou sullivan #transgender history #susan stryker

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whilereadingandwalking · 11 months

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Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution by Susan Stryker is a really great introduction to trans activism in the US. It introduced me to dozens of figures I didn't know but want to know, and analyzes cultural understanding, support, and backlash to trans people and issues over the decades. Particularly pertinent in a depressing way was her summary of "the difficult decades," in which a feminist anti-trans politics formed that modern day activists will recognize in today's ugly TERF movement.

This is a version updated in 2017 and Stryker describes it as an extensively new, updated edition, with a new final chapter. So, I am judging it by 2017 standards, and I found parts of the first section particularly very out-dated. For example, she writes that terms including nonbinary, genderqueer, and gender-nonconforming are used for "people who reject the terms transgender and transsexual for themselves," which is an inaccurate generalization, and that nonbinary is "an emerging terminological preference among younger generations who consider binary gender identity to be something more relevant to their grandparents than to themselves." None of this is accurate by 2017 understanding, but the worst part is her chuckling, dismissive tone, which I found troubling.

I believe she has a bit of a Boomer tone, a grown-up dismissiveness of young people and their terms, which does nothing for her book, and which I often found grating, particularly since this is meant to be a really useful text and guidepost for people to understand trans history. She often acknowledges that something is outdated and then proceeds to stick to it, rather than shifting to respect later understandings. One very weird passage is the one where she uses three different pronouns for Leslie Feinberg, who explicitly at the time of hir death preferred zie/hir pronouns. The new final chapter is useful but I thought the digital era and its innovations for queer community were not built out enough.

Nevertheless, this was an extremely useful book for me because I encountered a lot of incredible trans icons I hadn't yet known and gained a new perspective on trans and queer history that will help me in my activism moving forward. Stryker does a great job of unfolding the splits over time between the LGB and T movements, the feminist and trans movements, and more, all of which provides a lot of background for what we're facing today. Despite my issues with it, I'm ultimately very glad to have dug into it and filled the gaps in my knowledge about trans history.

#transgender history #susan stryker #bookworm #queer books #queer history #my book reviews

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moonbeam-murmurs · 1 year

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"my words to victor frankenstein above the village of chamounix: performing transgender rage" by susan stryker

#susan stryker #gender theory #queer theory #trans theory

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thepeoplesboyfriend · 2 years

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some words about transsexuality, in honor of my recent deboobing/deboning:

“My cut is of my body, not the absence of parts of my body. The regenerative effort of my cut is discursive; my transfiguring cut is a material-discursive practice through which I am of my body and of my trans self. […] My cut is generative within material limits but not with affective fixity; my tissues are mutable insofar as they are made of me and propel me to imagine an embodied elsewhere.”

“Transsexuals do not transcend gender and sex. We create embodiment by not jumping out of our bodies but by taking up a fold in our bodies, by folding or cutting ourselves, and creating a transformative scar of ourselves.”

- Eva Hayward, Lessons From a Starfish

“I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”

- Frankenstein’s Monster, Mary Shelly

“I will swim forever.

I will die for eternity.

I will learn to breathe water.

I will become the water.

if I cannot change my situation I will change myself.

In this active magical transformation

I recognize myself again.

I am groundless and boundless movement.

I am a furious flow.

I am one with the darkness and the wet.

And I am enraged.

Here at last is the chaos I held at bay.

Here at last is my strength. […]”

“Though we forgo the privilege of naturalness, we are not deterred, for we ally ourselves instead with the chaos and blackness from which Nature itself spills forth.”

- Susan Stryker, My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix

“Some people say that there is no gender, that it is a post modern construct, that in fact there are only man and woman and a few marginal confusions. To those people I ask: if your [male] body–fact is enough to establish your gender, you would willingly wear bright dresses and cry at movies, wouldn’t you? You would hold hands and complement each other on your beauty, wouldn’t you? Because your cock would be enough to make you a man.” - Isabel Fall, I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter

“God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: because he wants humanity to share in the act of creation. I am only doing the Good Works here on Earth as intended!” - Julian Jarboe

“ i’m a 24 hour living art form, unique on to myself and that’s a damn hard thing to be!“

“I deserve to press a man against my solid hard chest, feel his against mine, and have him feel mine against his. That’s what my heart feels, that’s what I want to express to him. I have learned to love my body—to finally be able to touch my nipples while masturbating and feel sexual about it—and I think I deserve to have my body relax with me. It will be like a miracle to look at myself, to run my hand over my chest, and to feel me.”

“I lay in the sun on the weekend, my skin becoming rich and golden. My body is vibrant with sexuality and tingling with sensation, electrified by every touch.”

- Lou Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure

“To be able to enter a safe, you must be open to hearing what the safe has to say about itself. To be able to enter your gender, you must be open to hearing what your self has to say about itself. Inside: riches. Inside: sex. Inside: love. Inside: beautiful bloody art. Inside: the chrysalis cracks down the middle, and out springs out a sacred figure with a bird for a head and visible glue and maybe jackelope antlers rising high like TV antennae and maybe vampire fangs implying a sentimental attachment to the rich earth of home, and to this reflection, disco-ball- sparkling, dissolving into the boundaries of my flesh, I say, oh there you are oh there you are oh there you are, oh there—and let the ocean interrupt me as it smacks me full in the face, full of salt and life, my eyes open wide to its sting, its illumination of new worlds and realms of being.” - Raphael Rae, Introduction to Safecracking for Transsexuals

#resources #susan stryker #isabel fall #eva hayward #transsexual #transsexuality #top surgery #raphael rae #lou sullivan #julian jarboe

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