Introduction

“…rather than go mad, or kill myself, or worst of all perhaps infect everyone around me with my profoundest melancholy, I would accept Dr. Benjamin’s last resort, and have my body altered” (Morris, 2002, p. 90).

Conundrum, by Welsh historian, travel writer, and author Jan Morris, is a groundbreaking memoir originally published in 1974, detailing her life and initial transition as a trans woman in the 1970s. Focusing on her often tumultuous and storied experiences with sexuality, marriage, childrearing, and employment, Morris documents the “progression” of her gender dysphoria, describing a lifetime of embodied suffering and self-hatred that “culminates” in her mid-life gender-affirming surgery. Morris’s retelling reinforces the mad-lib trans narrative, as introduced by Jacob Tobia in their memoir Sissy: A Coming-Of-Gender Story, and contextualized by Kit Heyam (2022) as “a story with a pre-written skeleton format, where the teller fills in the specifics from a limited list of options” (p. 18), a linear history recording a consistent ideation of being “born in the wrong body” stemming from childhood, eventually resulting in a gender-conforming, heterosexual, “respectable” life achieved through gender-affirming surgery. As trans* theorist Juliet Jaques (2017) notes, “many of these [trans* life-writing] conventions were codified in its most famous exponent, Conundrum” (p. 359), which Morris exemplifies by noting “I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl… it is the earliest memory of my life” (2002, p. 1). Thus, Morris’s work, going beyond merely enforcing the “mad-lib” narrative, fundamentally helped shape the creation of the genre. Therefore, I assert that the “mad lib” trans* memoir genre, as reflected throughout Jan Morris’s Conundrum (1974), both naturalizes and constructs trans* pain as a requirement for cultural intelligibility within a cis-centric society, depicting transhood* as inherently indicative of a lifetime of suffering and self-hatred.

The construction of the trans* pain narrative

Conundrum’s narrative of trans* livelihood as depletion-centred is further contextualized by the work of Unangax̂ scholar Eve Tuck (2009), and her focus on what she calls damage-centred research – research, regardless of intention, which amplifies minority voices only to extract their stories of pain – and its role in constructing marginalized communities as one-dimensional victims of oppression. Morris, through comments like “I wondered sometimes if it were all a punishment” (2002, p. 14) directly contributes to this sorrowful depiction of trans* life void of joy and vitality, fetishizing minoritarian pain, encouraging complacency, and documenting deficit without celebrating possibility or enacting change through a future-based philosophy. Conundrum publicizes these depictions of suffering to a larger cis mainstream, situating the role of continuous trans* pain narratives in actualizing the “mad-lib” memoir genre. Interrogating Morris’ formative work, and drawing from Tuck’s (2009) theorizations on desire-based paradigms, becomes crucial in (re)imagining self-depictions of trans subjectivities by “[(re)]consider[ing what] the long-term repercussions of thinking of ourselves as broken” (p. 409) are on conceptualizations of trans* joy as possibility, and the constitution of trans* vitalities, or “that which makes lives worth living” (Edelman, 2020, p. 109).

Morris’ sensationalization and large-scale (re)production of the dialectic of trans* sorrow constructs joy as a phenomena inherently reserved for the amorphous cisgender onlooker. As Black scholar Lindsey Stewart (2021) notes in her discussion of the hegemonic master/slave relationship, “the laughter of the enslaved invokes a power shift, whereby the enslaved partake of something that the slave masters presumed was firmly in their domain” (p. 36). Within a trans* scholarly context, Stewart’s analysis is a means of understanding how cis desires to view trans* pain (re)produce the naturalized power structure of cis/trans* gendered power relations, contorting the image and eventual representation of the transsexual. Seeing the trans* subject as inherently damaged becomes fundamental in a construction of cis identity, in which cis embodiment of joy becomes legitimized through the suffering of the trans* Other, instating joy as a fluidly shifting “product” inaccessible to the gender-defiant subaltern. This is echoed throughout Conundrum, where Morris’s hyper-reliance on documenting her pain in relation to her trans* identity is marketed to a cis audience: quotes like “science has elucidated some of the mystery of their condition” (2002, p. ix, emphasis added) show a purposeful use of the they pronoun to invoke a cis audience, wherein Morris becomes an “objective” third person, removed from her transfeminine identity. Morris thus assuages the cis consciousness, (re)producing an expected portrait of dismal and marred transhood* that validates the external cis identity, whilst attempting to displace herself from her own trans* subjectivity.

The alienation from the trans* self, evoked in conjunction with the stereotypical, corporeal narrative of trans* trauma to appease a cisgender audience, is furthered through former-Olympian-turned-media-personality Caitlyn Jenner’s 2017 memoir, The Secrets of My Life. As Jenner (2017) notes, “Imagine denying your core and soul…You can’t imagine it” (p. 10, emphasis added), paralleling Morris through her continued refusal to imagine or evoke a trans* readership. Through this presumed reality, Jenner’s (2017) reproduction of trans* pain, an account of “a body that I fundamentally loathe” (p. 9), takes on an entirely different meaning, defined by the naturalization of the cis perspective and a violent (re)Othering of trans* subjectivity(ies). It becomes obvious that this precedent of pain as the only valued narrative of trans* life, largely codified by Morris through Conundrum, has become the dominant frame for the cis conceptualization of transhood*, displacing extant trans* vitalities (Edelman, 2020).

Cultural Intelligibility: Dominant Culture’s Determiner of Subaltern Humanity and Disposability

To further nuance Conundrum’s construction of cultural intelligibility, it is crucial to understand how it becomes weaponized to define the parameters of what is meant by “human.” As Butler (1990) notes, “humanity” is determined through a normative expression of gender roles occurring along stratified racial, cultural, and economic lines, wherein one’s ability to conform to expected gender presentations defines worth and personhood. Their intelligibility to the dominant culture becomes both a question of legitimacy and survival (Butler, 1990). Furthermore, Butler (1990) asserts that gender itself is (re)constructed through repetition, becoming legible to others (particularly the cis public) through continuous reiteration. When Morris (2002) repeats the image of her gender as fundamentally tied to her suffering, she codifies a space wherein the cultural intelligibility of the trans* subject to the cis observer is reliant on a declaration of depletion. Comments like “By my mid-thirties my self-repugnance was more specific, and more bitter, and I began to detest the physique that had served me so loyally” (Morris, 2002, p. 77) weave a dialogue of pain into the fabric of trans* life, reinforcing a trans* necropolitics at the cost of emergent trans* vitalities, demoting the trans* subject to a one-dimensional victim stripped of individual agency and validated through their ability to perform self-hatred.

Moreover, as Vipond (2019) notes, trans* life writers utilize the repetition of these accepted tropes of transhood* (i.e. the “born in the wrong body” narrative), dependent on a portrayal of the trans* body as damaged, to assimilate and gain proximity to a normative idea of gender. The “accepted” trans* life-writing trope of cross-gender childhood identification crucial to the “mad-lib” categorization is exemplified throughout Conundrum, as Morris (2002) notes: “I have had no doubt about my gender since that moment of self-realization beneath the piano” (p. 21). Affirming the “validity” of her trans* identity (Vipond, 2019), Morris’ construction of gendered “authenticity,” whilst “protecting” her from cis suspicion through a politic of respectability, not only displaces expressions of trans* vitality, but produces a standard of legibility that is reliant on the ability of the trans* Other to perform normative, white idealizations of gender that (re)produce the damage-centred trans* pain narrative.

This narrative of visible trans* pain as a requirement for cultural intelligibility, and its subsequent construction, consumability, and fetishization to affirm a cis politic of domination, is further embodied by Josh Greenbaum’s 2024 documentary Will & Harper, following Harper Steele, former head writer on Saturday Night Live, and American actor and comedian Will Ferrell on their cross-country Americana road trip. Steele’s coherence and cultural intelligibility as a trans woman hinges on the continuous exploitation of her pain, constructing her as depleted and helpless, and thus, in need of cis pity and saviourism. Mirroring Morris, she laments “I just hated myself so much…I just felt like a monster” (Greenbaum, 2024, 1:37:01). This self-hatred is reiterated so frequently that it becomes a framework through which the cis people in her life conceptualize her transness, with Ferrell noting “I had no idea the kind of despair that Harper had for so long” (Greenbaum, 2024, 1:44:03). Through this process of repetition, Harper’s suffering becomes an inherent aspect of her transfeminine identity, and a requirement for cultural intelligibility to the cis audience to which this film is addressed. Ferrell confirms this by directly speaking to an assumed cis viewer, stating “so many of us don’t know what the rules of engagement are” (Greenbaum, 2024, 10:17, emphasis added), facilitating a linguistic frame of exclusion that establishes a naturalized cis audience at the cost of presencing dynamic trans* subjectivities. Steele’s humanity and “validity” within the constraints of her transhood thus rely wholly on her ability to regurgitate a “respectable” portrait of the “good transsexual” (Skidmore, 2011), a narrative of suffering to assuage the cis consciousness and (re)produce a hierarchy of cis hegemony.

Trans* joy as cultural (un)intelligibility: Visibility beyond a politic of respectability

In line with the theorizations of Tuck (2009) and Stewart (2021), it remains crucial to look beyond the pathologization of the dispossessed trans* body codified by Conundrum, instead highlighting complex legacies of joy, hope, and wisdom whilst simultaneously making space for loss and despair – refusing narratives of depletion and embracing possibility. To express narratives of transhood* as impassioned metamorphoses instead of dismal embodiments of depreciation is to (re)construct a culturally (un)intelligible, counterhegemonic discord of subaltern subjectivity, fundamentally rejecting the normative “mad lib” narrative.

Here, I draw from transmasculine* visionary, philosopher and curator Paul B. Preciado’s Orlando: My Political Biography, a documentary/memoir/art piece that is both genre, gender, and time-bending – any attempt to categorize it is a disservice to its profound critique of sexual and chronological binarism. Actively (re)producing the varied yet collective trans* subject, Orlando (re)constitutes trans* corporalities, noting that “every individual life is a collective history” (Preciado, 2023, 00:24:15), rejecting a construction of personhood and humanity measured by one’s ability to become culturally intelligible and “respectable” by creating a trans* sovereign space that actively Others the cis onlooker. In highlighting the vast diversity in the trans* experience whilst concurrently noting the shared ontology of (un)doing gender that presences a continuity of intergenerational defiance, Orlando celebrates trans* vitalities, critiquing yet holding space for the role of hegemonic memoirs like Morris’ Conundrum. Orlando questions the foundational idea of a memoir/biography itself, stating: “​​Life is not at all like a biography… it consists in the metamorphosis of oneself, letting oneself be transformed by time, becoming not only other but others” (Preciado, 2023, 00:11:55).

Decentring the convention, form, and function of trans* life writing, Preciado (2023) refutes Morris’ self-hating and dysmorphic narrative: when Orlando is asked if they consider themselves “born in the wrong body” by a psychiatrist, they reply: “What an obsession with the binary. No, I am a living body trapped in a normative regime” (Preciado, 2023, 00:17:42). Crucially, Orlando does not dismiss the validity of individuals’ experiences of being “born in the wrong body,” – in fact, Orlando gives space to an Orlando who subscribes to this means of understanding their own subjectivity – rather, Orlando critiques its liberal application to a generalized Trans* Other, particularly as it is constructed through a narrative of pain and self-hatred. Morris (2002), as an Orlando of her own, would thus not be rejected for centring this narrative in her own trans* journey, but rather for her role in popularizing it as a critical requirement of inhabiting a culturally intelligible space with the “transsexual condition” (p. x). Thus, in daring to “walk toward life, brave, happy…proud and joyful…I’ll…love myself” (Preciado, 2023, 1:29:45), Orlando rejects a narrative of trans* depletion, instead constructing a demonstrable path forward for trans* vitalities free of violent dehumanization and limitation of trans* identity and possibility through gendered “respectability politics” and depersonalized ideals of cultural intelligibility.

^{An interview with Preciado (2023) that further nuances Orlando’s critique of binary, normative representations of the trans* life narrative.}

Conclusion

Whilst imperative to critique the profound impact that Morris’s Conundrum, and “mad-lib” trans* life writing at large, have had on the codification of trans* subjectivity(ies) as inherently damaged, this does not suggest that the validity of Morris’s lived experiences of pain, struggle, and pathologization should come into question. Instead, I ask what it means to combat a blanket narrative of homogenous trans* suffering, presencing “spaces of care within death worlds” (Edelman, 2020, p. 125) that constitute emerging, (un)intelligible trans* vitalities. Moving beyond a hegemonic politic of respectability through a revolutionary expression of joy becomes crucial in uplifting trans* sovereignty, self-determination, and agency, refuting the ability of the cis Other to define the constraints of our humanity. Whilst this assertion of radical joy must make space for the intricate nuances of trans* rage, grief, and a multitude of other trans* ontologies, the importance of (re)imagining the trans* subject as something more than damaged cannot be overstated.

References

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