When's the last time you were totally consumed by a piece of media? I don't mean just when you really enjoyed something or raved about it to your friends and coworkers, but when did something dramatically alter your life? For me, it happened yesterday while reading Trans Girl Suicide Museum by hannah baer.
Now, I am not trans. Or at least, I have never identified as trans or felt the need to go through the intense, internal, analyzing process to figure this out. I have always been told I was a girl and have never felt anything pulling me away from this description. Do I hate gender roles? Yes. Do I think gender is stupid? As a set of rules, yes. Do I think gender doesn't exist? To some extent and in other ways, no. Anyways, all this to say that what I loved about TGSM cannot be explained away by saying I identified with hannah on this level. I love that her writing is for trans people first and foremost and I'm glad I read it. I hope I don't come across as too much of a cis person making everything about themselves (inevitably, I will), but I want to get my thoughts out and sit with them. If you think this is insuffrable, just skip it.
I couldn't put the book down. After reading the first page on my work computer at the library, watching bar studiers come in and out, I was hooked. I read it on my phone as I walked around and on the bus, even while I was Facetiming my boyfriend later that night. At first I thought I liked TGSM because I liked most seedy things and hannah's talk about ketamine, being high at raves, and suicide fit the bill. But that doesn't quite make sense either. Right now I want to say it was her instrospection, her unwillingness to flinch away from any thought, any experience, any rabbit-hole, that hooked me. Even that I'm not too sure about.
Alright, the more I think and write, maybe it's this: a) hannah calls for us to think and feel deeply about our own lives -- our gender, our ways of expression, our doubts, our craziness, our flaws, our love, etc, etc -- with such a raw, beautiful voice that one can't help but tune in. b) something about the suicide of it all. I feel like I've rarely read or seen depictions of depression laid out like this in a way that didn't feel pitiful or like it was trying to convince you of something. With hannah, it is a matter of fact, a state of being, not a sin or a crime. I really liked her description of this type of being as a river that one wades into from time to time. It makes me think of jeff buckley and virginia woolf. I liked how she described her experience of being trans as stuck in a museum, that there were all this pillars and monuments that she couldn't avoid and had to reckon with all the time. c) although hannah gives dates and times, there is a timelessness to the whole work. Like how she describes k, there is a weightless, floating aspect to her words. This could have happened at any time, this is happening now, this will happen again and again. Her words were an endless portal to a place I've never been and a place I didn't necessarily want to leave, even though I didn't really belong there. I felt like alice falling down the rabbit-hole. I wondered if i went deep into my own mind like that, what I would find. d) hannah shows us a possibilty of future without preaching or trying to give anyone a roadmap. She writes about how too many people write/want to write think pieces and how no one is allowing themselves to just feel things and share how they feel. Maybe if we did this, we would be existing in a better world, one that didn't try to have a "right" answer all the time. She gives no conclusion, no answers, only offers up her life and feelings for us to make sense of the words and the way we relate to them. This goes back to the timelessness and the idea of a nebulous future. A future we can never really reach but can hope for.
*sigh* I could go on and on about all the things I found beautiful about TGSM. I'll stop for now. I don't think I captured exactly what I wanted to say but trust I will be thinking about this work for a while. I think I'm coming to terms with my identity as a woman in a capitalistic society who desperately wants to get out. I'm finding myself sinking in the center of everything everyone else tells me is important or tells me I should do, even if they don't say it aloud. At the end of TGSM, hannah says something about swimming towards the edges to get free. And, god, I want to start kicking and splashing towards that edge.
We are all Jack's aching bile duct
Yesterday, I went to a bar at the corner of Jackson and Polk. I ended up there unintentionally after I discovered the wine bar I've been meaning to try was filled to the brim. Twenty-somethings leaned out of the windows and over the small tables with glasses clinking and chatter stiffling the surrounding city noise. It was laughable to think a Thursday night would be quiet here. Trendy -- that's the word the papers and Google Maps had thrown around. Why did I think I was the only one who had gotten the news?
Anyways, I walked past this hotbed of happily-grouped friends as if I had never heard of the place. Walked right by without breaking stride until I passed by a little bell tower that boasted food and drink 'till late and I barreled my way inside. There was no hostess or bartender to greet me, and I awkwardly stood looking around until I saw a man wiping down tables. He gave me a menu and told me to sit wherever I wanted, so I positioned myself ny the window and ordered their house wine.
A group of boys came in and sat down next to me, ordered some food and beer, then proceeded to talk about biostats and how much iron they had in their blood. I had read an article earlier in the week about SF techies always wanting to be "early-adopters" and the rise of peptides and biohackers, so I listened in.
Oh, the words they used! They talked about apps and how you could calculate the amount of cholesterol in the body by doing a calculation involving grams and daily percentages. They talked of vitamins, melanin, how their skin color determined their retention of fiber. How to maximize deep sleep brain waves, male pattern baldness, hiding being vegan from parents, seed oil, strings of chemicals and numbers and horrible sounding medicines, longevity, the right type of high to get without sacrificing health -- it was all mentioned and discussed. It seemed they had nothing else to talk about besides the tortuous optimization of their health and wellbeing. And as I looked over, wondering what "perfect health" would look like (one of the guys gushed over another's perfect bioscore), I only found three nerdy-looking CS types who looked like they needed a shower, a comb, and new clothes.
And then it clicked. I don't know why it took me so long to realize, but I finally did. The early-adopters, the biohackers, the looksmaxxers, and all the techies were desperately trying to heal the child-wound of being unwanted, left out, and ugly.
This hurt had never resolved for them. Adulthood and the world of corporate backstabbing and tech-fueled riches were just the Playground 2.0, this time with no bell to bring one back to class. For all they had earned in the world, it meant nothing if they were not voted Most Beautiful, Most Popular, Most Likely to be Whistled At. These boys at the bar were fledglings -- they still had all their down -- but they were ready. With all their talk of stats and ways to make themselves better physically, I thought of all the other people in the city doing the same. God help me if I ever have to talk for more than five minutes on the subject in real life. As Malcom X put it:
"Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin, to such extent that you bleach, to get like the white man? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to, so much so that you don’t want to be around each other?"
While Malcom X was specifically talking about how Black people turned against their bodies and their modes of being to better appease white people, I think the same logic backs the prevelance of killing ourselves in the name of health and beauty
Today, I will not