{"id":388,"date":"2024-12-18T18:22:41","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T23:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/transmemoir\/?post_type=chapter&p=388"},"modified":"2025-01-15T12:29:21","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T17:29:21","slug":"conundrum-and-the-trans-pain-narrative-denouncing-a-dialectic-of-trauma","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/transmemoir\/chapter\/conundrum-and-the-trans-pain-narrative-denouncing-a-dialectic-of-trauma\/","title":{"raw":"Conundrum and the Trans* Pain Narrative: Denouncing a Dialectic of Trauma","rendered":"Conundrum and the Trans* Pain Narrative: Denouncing a Dialectic of Trauma"},"content":{"raw":"

Introduction<\/h2>\r\n
\u201c...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\u201d (Morris, 2002, p. 90).<\/blockquote>\r\nConundrum<\/em><\/a>, 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 \u201cprogression\u201d of her gender dysphoria, describing a lifetime of embodied suffering and self-hatred that \u201cculminates\u201d in her mid-life gender-affirming surgery. Morris\u2019s retelling reinforces the mad-lib trans narrative, as introduced by Jacob Tobia in their memoir Sissy: A Coming-Of-Gender Story<\/em>, and contextualized by Kit Heyam (2022) as \u201ca story with a pre-written skeleton format, where the teller fills in the specifics from a limited list of options\u201d (p. 18), a linear history recording a consistent ideation of being \u201cborn in the wrong body\u201d stemming from childhood, eventually resulting in a gender-conforming, heterosexual, \u201crespectable\u201d life achieved through gender-affirming surgery. As trans* theorist Juliet Jaques (2017) notes, \u201cmany of these [trans* life-writing] conventions were codified in its most famous exponent, Conundrum\u201d (p. 359), which Morris exemplifies by noting \u201cI 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\u2026 it is the earliest memory of my life\u201d (2002, p. 1). Thus, Morris\u2019s work, going beyond merely enforcing the \u201cmad-lib\u201d narrative, fundamentally helped shape<\/em> the creation of the genre. Therefore, I assert that the \u201cmad lib\u201d trans* memoir genre, as reflected throughout Jan Morris\u2019s Conundrum<\/em> (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.\r\n

The construction of the trans* pain narrative<\/h2>\r\nConundrum\u2019<\/em>s narrative of trans* livelihood as depletion-centred is further contextualized by the work of Unangax\u0302 scholar Eve Tuck (2009), and her focus on what she calls damage-centred research \u2013 research, regardless of intention, which amplifies minority voices only to extract their stories of pain \u2013 and its role in constructing marginalized communities as one-dimensional victims of oppression. Morris, through comments like \u201cI wondered sometimes if it were all a punishment\u201d (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<\/em> publicizes these depictions of suffering to a larger cis mainstream, situating the role of continuous trans* pain narratives in actualizing the \u201cmad-lib\u201d memoir genre. Interrogating Morris\u2019 formative work, and drawing from Tuck\u2019s (2009) theorizations on desire-based paradigms, becomes crucial in (re)imagining self-depictions of trans subjectivities by \u201c[(re)]consider[ing what] the long-term repercussions of thinking of ourselves as broken<\/em>\u201d (p. 409) are on conceptualizations of trans* joy as possibility, and the constitution of trans* vitalities, or \u201cthat which makes lives worth living\u201d (Edelman, 2020, p. 109).\r\n\r\nMorris\u2019 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, \u201cthe laughter of the enslaved invokes a power shift, whereby the enslaved partake of something that the slave masters presumed was firmly in their domain\u201d (p. 36). Within a trans* scholarly context, Stewart\u2019s 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 \u201cproduct\u201d inaccessible to the gender-defiant subaltern. This is echoed throughout Conundrum<\/em>, where Morris\u2019s hyper-reliance on documenting her pain in relation to her trans* identity is marketed to a cis audience: quotes like \u201cscience has elucidated some of the mystery of their condition<\/em>\u201d (2002, p. ix, emphasis added) show a purposeful use of the they pronoun to invoke a cis audience, wherein Morris becomes an \u201cobjective\u201d 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.\r\n\r\nThe 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\u2019s 2017 memoir, The Secrets of My Life<\/em>. As Jenner (2017) notes, \u201cImagine denying your core and soul...You can\u2019t imagine it\u201d (p. 10, emphasis added), paralleling Morris through her continued refusal to imagine or evoke a trans* readership. Through this presumed reality, Jenner\u2019s (2017) reproduction of trans* pain, an account of \u201ca body that I fundamentally loathe\u201d (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<\/em>, has become the dominant frame for the cis conceptualization of transhood*, displacing extant trans* vitalities (Edelman, 2020).\r\n

Cultural Intelligibility: Dominant Culture\u2019s Determiner of Subaltern Humanity and Disposability<\/h2>\r\nTo further nuance Conundrum<\/em>\u2019s construction of cultural intelligibility, it is crucial to understand how it becomes weaponized to define the parameters of what is meant by \u201chuman.\u201d As Butler (1990) notes, \u201chumanity\u201d is determined through a normative expression of gender roles occurring along stratified racial, cultural, and economic lines, wherein one\u2019s 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 \u201cBy 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\u201d (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.\r\n
\r\n\r\nCultural intelligibility:<\/strong> Following trans* scholar Judith Butler\u2019s theorizations in their seminal work Gender Trouble (1990), cultural intelligibility will be defined as the process of repetition used to idealize and cement understandings and (un)doings of gender, and construct \u201cwhat will and will not be intelligibly human, what will and will not be considered to be \u2018real\u2019\u201d (p. xxiii).\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_395\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"543\"]\"\" Newspaper article<\/a> written by Morris\u2019 son, highlighting how Morris became culturally intelligible to a cis public through a normative narrative of self-hatred culminating only through surgery.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nMoreover, as Vipond (2019) notes, trans* life writers utilize the repetition of these accepted tropes of transhood* (i.e. the \u201cborn in the wrong body\u201d narrative), dependent on a portrayal of the trans* body as damaged, to assimilate and gain proximity to a normative idea of gender. The \u201caccepted\u201d trans* life-writing trope of cross-gender childhood identification crucial to the \u201cmad-lib\u201d categorization is exemplified throughout Conundrum<\/em>, as Morris (2002) notes: \u201cI have had no doubt about my gender since that moment of self-realization beneath the piano\u201d (p. 21). Affirming the \u201cvalidity\u201d of her trans* identity (Vipond, 2019), Morris\u2019 construction of gendered \u201cauthenticity,\u201d whilst \u201cprotecting\u201d her from cis suspicion through a politic of respectability<\/em>, 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.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_398\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\"]\"\" Morris on the Dick Cavett Show, demonstrating how she made herself visible through the lens of the \u201cgood,\u201d respectable transsexual.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThis 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\u2019s 2024 documentary Will & Harper<\/em>, following Harper Steele, former head writer on Saturday Night Live<\/em>, and American actor and comedian Will Ferrell on their cross-country Americana road trip. Steele\u2019s 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 \u201cI just hated myself so much\u2026I just felt like a monster\u201d (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 \u201cI had no idea the kind of despair that Harper had for so long\u201d (Greenbaum, 2024, 1:44:03). Through this process of repetition, Harper\u2019s 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 \u201cso many of us don\u2019t know what the rules of engagement are\u201d (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\u2019s humanity and \u201cvalidity\u201d within the constraints of her transhood thus rely wholly on her ability to regurgitate a \u201crespectable\u201d portrait of the \u201cgood transsexual\u201d (Skidmore, 2011), a narrative of suffering to assuage the cis consciousness and (re)produce a hierarchy of cis hegemony.\r\n

Trans* joy as cultural (un)intelligibility: Visibility beyond a politic of respectability<\/h2>\r\nIn 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<\/em>, instead highlighting complex legacies of joy, hope, and wisdom whilst simultaneously making space for loss and despair \u2013 refusing<\/em> 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 \u201cmad lib\u201d narrative.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_400\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"]\"\" A ruff collar, the singular costume piece worn by the Orlando(s), representing trans* collectivity.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nHere, I draw from transmasculine* visionary, philosopher and curator Paul B. Preciado\u2019s Orlando: My Political Biography<\/em>, a documentary\/memoir\/art piece that is both genre, gender, and time-bending \u2013 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<\/em> (re)constitutes trans* corporalities, noting that \u201cevery individual life is a collective history\u201d (Preciado, 2023, 00:24:15), rejecting a construction of personhood and humanity measured by one\u2019s ability to become culturally intelligible and \u201crespectable\u201d 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<\/em> celebrates trans* vitalities, critiquing yet holding space for the role of hegemonic memoirs like Morris\u2019 Conundrum<\/em>. Orlando<\/em> questions the foundational idea of a memoir\/biography itself, stating: \u201c\u200b\u200bLife is not at all like a biography\u2026 it consists in the metamorphosis of oneself, letting oneself be transformed by time, becoming not only other but others\u201d (Preciado, 2023, 00:11:55).\r\n\r\nDecentring the convention, form, and function of trans* life writing, Preciado (2023) refutes Morris\u2019 self-hating and dysmorphic narrative: when Orlando is asked if they consider themselves \u201cborn in the wrong body\u201d by a psychiatrist, they reply: \u201cWhat an obsession with the binary. No, I am a living body trapped in a normative regime\u201d (Preciado, 2023, 00:17:42). Crucially, Orlando does not dismiss the validity of individuals\u2019 experiences of being \u201cborn in the wrong body,\u201d \u2013 in fact, Orlando gives space to an Orlando who subscribes to this means of understanding their own subjectivity \u2013 rather, Orlando<\/em> 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 \u201ctranssexual condition\u201d (p. x). Thus, in daring to \u201cwalk toward life, brave, happy\u2026proud and joyful...I'll\u2026love 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 \u201crespectability politics\u201d and depersonalized ideals of cultural intelligibility.\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=57w9Tcqw3S8\r\n

An interview with Preciado (2023) that further nuances Orlando\u2019s critique of binary, normative representations of the trans* life narrative.<\/sup><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\r\nWhilst imperative to critique the profound impact that Morris\u2019s Conundrum<\/em>, and \u201cmad-lib\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201cspaces of care within death worlds\u201d (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.\r\n
\r\n

Author Positionality Statement - Charlie Sutherland<\/h2>\r\nI am a transmasculine, genderqueer and disabled white settler living on the stolen Lands of the x\u02b7m\u0259\u03b8k\u02b7\u0259y\u0313\u0259m, s\u0259lilw\u0259ta\u026c, and s\u1e35wx\u0331w\u00fa7mesh Nations, majoring in Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice with a minor in First Nations and Indigenous Studies. In keeping with an ethical standard of praxis, I find it is crucial to both acknowledge and contend with my own lived realities and positionality and the profound ways it impacts my knowledge synthesis, whilst simultaneously highlighting the role of Western academia in the process of subjugation of the minority \u201cOther\u201d within a landscape of colonial power. This is especially true when writing about\/for\/with minoritarian communities, as is evidenced in this paper. As a trans* person myself, more specifically, a transmasculine person that exists outside the Eurocentric gender binary, my lived experience of (un)doing gender has indelibly shaped the inherent ways that I understand and interact with the (largely binary transfeminine) knowledge and experiences presented and analyzed in this piece. Despite a shared trans* identity with much of the creatives I have chosen to discuss, our experiences of transhood* largely diverge, as I lack a transfeminine* lived experience, and thus, being aware of this difference is particularly important when touching on themes of transmisogyny and heteropatriarchy. Moreover, as a white settler, particularly one working within Western academia, I also wish to draw attention to the fact that I have been brought up and socialized within a settler colonial society that privileges binary, individualist, and white-centric epistemologies that have intrinsically shaped the way I interact with, value, and produce knowledge. This acknowledgement is notable as I engage and discuss scholarship created by BIPOC academics, many drawing from Indigenous temporalities (see Unangax\u0302 scholar Eve Tuck\u2019s work).\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

References<\/h1>\r\nButler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity<\/em>. Routledge.\r\n\r\nEdelman, E. A. (2020). Beyond resilience: Trans coalitional activism as radical self-care<\/em>. Social Text, 38(1), 109\u2013130. https:\/\/doi.org\/ 10.1215\/01642472-7971127<\/a>\r\n\r\nGreenbaum, J. (Director). (2024). Will & Harper<\/em> [Film]. Wayfarer Studios; Delirio Films; Gloria Sanchez Productions.\r\n\r\nFilm at Lincoln Center. (2023). Paul B. Preciado on Orlando, My Political Biography<\/em> | NYFF61 [Video]. YouTube. https:\/\/youtu.be\/57w9Tcqw3S8?si=bfbwN6npEes7CCRV<\/a>\r\n\r\nHeyam, K. (2022). Before we were trans: A new history of gender<\/em>. Seal Press.\r\n\r\nHigginbotham, E. B. (1993). Righteous discontent: The women\u2019s movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920<\/em>. Harvard University Press.\r\n\r\nJacques, J. (2017). Forms of resistance: Uses of memoir, theory, and fiction in trans life writing<\/em>. Life Writing, 14(3), 357\u2013370. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4324\/9781351200394-7<\/a>\r\n\r\nJenner, C. (2017). The secrets of my life<\/em>. Trapeze.\r\n\r\nMorris, J. (2002). Conundrum<\/em>. Faber and Faber Limited.\r\n\r\nPreciado, P. B. (Director). (2023). Orlando: My political biography<\/em> [Film]. Les Films du Poisson; Arte; 24 Images.\r\n\r\nStewart, L. (2021). The politics of Black joy: Zora Neale Hurston and neo-abolitionism<\/em>. Northwestern University Press.\r\n\r\nSkidmore, E. (2011). Constructing the \u201cgood transsexual\u201d: Christine Jorgensen, whiteness, and heteronormativity in the mid-twentieth-century press<\/em>. Feminist Studies, 37(2), 270\u2013300. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1353\/fem.2011.0043<\/a>\r\n\r\nTuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities<\/em>. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409\u2013428. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.17763\/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15<\/a>\r\n\r\nVipond, E. (2019). Becoming culturally (un)intelligible: Exploring the terrain of trans life writing.<\/em> A\/b: Auto\/Biography Studies , 34(1), 19\u201343. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4324\/9781003199465-2<\/a>","rendered":"

Introduction<\/h2>\n

\u201c…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\u201d (Morris, 2002, p. 90).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Conundrum<\/em><\/a>, 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 \u201cprogression\u201d of her gender dysphoria, describing a lifetime of embodied suffering and self-hatred that \u201cculminates\u201d in her mid-life gender-affirming surgery. Morris\u2019s retelling reinforces the mad-lib trans narrative, as introduced by Jacob Tobia in their memoir Sissy: A Coming-Of-Gender Story<\/em>, and contextualized by Kit Heyam (2022) as \u201ca story with a pre-written skeleton format, where the teller fills in the specifics from a limited list of options\u201d (p. 18), a linear history recording a consistent ideation of being \u201cborn in the wrong body\u201d stemming from childhood, eventually resulting in a gender-conforming, heterosexual, \u201crespectable\u201d life achieved through gender-affirming surgery. As trans* theorist Juliet Jaques (2017) notes, \u201cmany of these [trans* life-writing] conventions were codified in its most famous exponent, Conundrum\u201d (p. 359), which Morris exemplifies by noting \u201cI 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\u2026 it is the earliest memory of my life\u201d (2002, p. 1). Thus, Morris\u2019s work, going beyond merely enforcing the \u201cmad-lib\u201d narrative, fundamentally helped shape<\/em> the creation of the genre. Therefore, I assert that the \u201cmad lib\u201d trans* memoir genre, as reflected throughout Jan Morris\u2019s Conundrum<\/em> (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.<\/p>\n

The construction of the trans* pain narrative<\/h2>\n

Conundrum\u2019<\/em>s narrative of trans* livelihood as depletion-centred is further contextualized by the work of Unangax\u0302 scholar Eve Tuck (2009), and her focus on what she calls damage-centred research \u2013 research, regardless of intention, which amplifies minority voices only to extract their stories of pain \u2013 and its role in constructing marginalized communities as one-dimensional victims of oppression. Morris, through comments like \u201cI wondered sometimes if it were all a punishment\u201d (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<\/em> publicizes these depictions of suffering to a larger cis mainstream, situating the role of continuous trans* pain narratives in actualizing the \u201cmad-lib\u201d memoir genre. Interrogating Morris\u2019 formative work, and drawing from Tuck\u2019s (2009) theorizations on desire-based paradigms, becomes crucial in (re)imagining self-depictions of trans subjectivities by \u201c[(re)]consider[ing what] the long-term repercussions of thinking of ourselves as broken<\/em>\u201d (p. 409) are on conceptualizations of trans* joy as possibility, and the constitution of trans* vitalities, or \u201cthat which makes lives worth living\u201d (Edelman, 2020, p. 109).<\/p>\n

Morris\u2019 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, \u201cthe laughter of the enslaved invokes a power shift, whereby the enslaved partake of something that the slave masters presumed was firmly in their domain\u201d (p. 36). Within a trans* scholarly context, Stewart\u2019s 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 \u201cproduct\u201d inaccessible to the gender-defiant subaltern. This is echoed throughout Conundrum<\/em>, where Morris\u2019s hyper-reliance on documenting her pain in relation to her trans* identity is marketed to a cis audience: quotes like \u201cscience has elucidated some of the mystery of their condition<\/em>\u201d (2002, p. ix, emphasis added) show a purposeful use of the they pronoun to invoke a cis audience, wherein Morris becomes an \u201cobjective\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 2017 memoir, The Secrets of My Life<\/em>. As Jenner (2017) notes, \u201cImagine denying your core and soul…You can\u2019t imagine it\u201d (p. 10, emphasis added), paralleling Morris through her continued refusal to imagine or evoke a trans* readership. Through this presumed reality, Jenner\u2019s (2017) reproduction of trans* pain, an account of \u201ca body that I fundamentally loathe\u201d (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<\/em>, has become the dominant frame for the cis conceptualization of transhood*, displacing extant trans* vitalities (Edelman, 2020).<\/p>\n

Cultural Intelligibility: Dominant Culture\u2019s Determiner of Subaltern Humanity and Disposability<\/h2>\n

To further nuance Conundrum<\/em>\u2019s construction of cultural intelligibility, it is crucial to understand how it becomes weaponized to define the parameters of what is meant by \u201chuman.\u201d As Butler (1990) notes, \u201chumanity\u201d is determined through a normative expression of gender roles occurring along stratified racial, cultural, and economic lines, wherein one\u2019s 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 \u201cBy 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\u201d (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.<\/p>\n

\n

Cultural intelligibility:<\/strong> Following trans* scholar Judith Butler\u2019s theorizations in their seminal work Gender Trouble (1990), cultural intelligibility will be defined as the process of repetition used to idealize and cement understandings and (un)doings of gender, and construct \u201cwhat will and will not be intelligibly human, what will and will not be considered to be \u2018real\u2019\u201d (p. xxiii).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"
Newspaper article<\/a> written by Morris\u2019 son, highlighting how Morris became culturally intelligible to a cis public through a normative narrative of self-hatred culminating only through surgery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Moreover, as Vipond (2019) notes, trans* life writers utilize the repetition of these accepted tropes of transhood* (i.e. the \u201cborn in the wrong body\u201d narrative), dependent on a portrayal of the trans* body as damaged, to assimilate and gain proximity to a normative idea of gender. The \u201caccepted\u201d trans* life-writing trope of cross-gender childhood identification crucial to the \u201cmad-lib\u201d categorization is exemplified throughout Conundrum<\/em>, as Morris (2002) notes: \u201cI have had no doubt about my gender since that moment of self-realization beneath the piano\u201d (p. 21). Affirming the \u201cvalidity\u201d of her trans* identity (Vipond, 2019), Morris\u2019 construction of gendered \u201cauthenticity,\u201d whilst \u201cprotecting\u201d her from cis suspicion through a politic of respectability<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

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Morris on the Dick Cavett Show, demonstrating how she made herself visible through the lens of the \u201cgood,\u201d respectable transsexual.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u2019s 2024 documentary Will & Harper<\/em>, following Harper Steele, former head writer on Saturday Night Live<\/em>, and American actor and comedian Will Ferrell on their cross-country Americana road trip. Steele\u2019s 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 \u201cI just hated myself so much\u2026I just felt like a monster\u201d (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 \u201cI had no idea the kind of despair that Harper had for so long\u201d (Greenbaum, 2024, 1:44:03). Through this process of repetition, Harper\u2019s 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 \u201cso many of us don\u2019t know what the rules of engagement are\u201d (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\u2019s humanity and \u201cvalidity\u201d within the constraints of her transhood thus rely wholly on her ability to regurgitate a \u201crespectable\u201d portrait of the \u201cgood transsexual\u201d (Skidmore, 2011), a narrative of suffering to assuage the cis consciousness and (re)produce a hierarchy of cis hegemony.<\/p>\n

Trans* joy as cultural (un)intelligibility: Visibility beyond a politic of respectability<\/h2>\n

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<\/em>, instead highlighting complex legacies of joy, hope, and wisdom whilst simultaneously making space for loss and despair \u2013 refusing<\/em> 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 \u201cmad lib\u201d narrative.<\/p>\n

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A ruff collar, the singular costume piece worn by the Orlando(s), representing trans* collectivity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here, I draw from transmasculine* visionary, philosopher and curator Paul B. Preciado\u2019s Orlando: My Political Biography<\/em>, a documentary\/memoir\/art piece that is both genre, gender, and time-bending \u2013 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<\/em> (re)constitutes trans* corporalities, noting that \u201cevery individual life is a collective history\u201d (Preciado, 2023, 00:24:15), rejecting a construction of personhood and humanity measured by one\u2019s ability to become culturally intelligible and \u201crespectable\u201d 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<\/em> celebrates trans* vitalities, critiquing yet holding space for the role of hegemonic memoirs like Morris\u2019 Conundrum<\/em>. Orlando<\/em> questions the foundational idea of a memoir\/biography itself, stating: \u201c\u200b\u200bLife is not at all like a biography\u2026 it consists in the metamorphosis of oneself, letting oneself be transformed by time, becoming not only other but others\u201d (Preciado, 2023, 00:11:55).<\/p>\n

Decentring the convention, form, and function of trans* life writing, Preciado (2023) refutes Morris\u2019 self-hating and dysmorphic narrative: when Orlando is asked if they consider themselves \u201cborn in the wrong body\u201d by a psychiatrist, they reply: \u201cWhat an obsession with the binary. No, I am a living body trapped in a normative regime\u201d (Preciado, 2023, 00:17:42). Crucially, Orlando does not dismiss the validity of individuals\u2019 experiences of being \u201cborn in the wrong body,\u201d \u2013 in fact, Orlando gives space to an Orlando who subscribes to this means of understanding their own subjectivity \u2013 rather, Orlando<\/em> 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 \u201ctranssexual condition\u201d (p. x). Thus, in daring to \u201cwalk toward life, brave, happy\u2026proud and joyful…I’ll\u2026love 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 \u201crespectability politics\u201d and depersonalized ideals of cultural intelligibility.<\/p>\n