Leslie Feinberg

• b. September 1, 1949• long-time activist in labor movements

and transgender community• prefers gender-neutral pronouns• won the Stonewall Book Award,

Lambda Literary Award, and ALA Gay & Lesbian book award for Stone Butch Blues

thinking with Stryker

• “Transgender studies enables a critique of the conditions that cause transgender phenomena to stand out in the first place, and that allow gender normativity to disappear into the unalyzed, ambient background” (3).

• For Stryker, “ultimately, it is not just transgender phenomena per se that are of interest, but rather the manner in which these phenomena reveal the operations of systems and institutions that simultaneously produce various possibilities of viable personhood, and eliminate others” (3).

So… what does Stone Butch Blues reveal regarding systems and institutions that make certain forms of personhood viable and not others?how does it enable a critique of gender normativity?

Discuss!

• What kinds of histories does Feinberg want us to inherit?

• And how do we do this well?

what are important spaces in the novel?

• what do these spaces foreclose or prevent?

• what do they enable?

trans-genre

• Feinberg hirself has called SBB “thinly disguised autobiography.”

• Zie notes: "I felt, by telling it autobiographically, that I would pull back in a lot of places."

• The thin distance of fiction allowed Feinberg "tell more of the truth."

Prosser on trans-genre

• While "autobiography seeks to 'find out who you are,' to reveal the naked facts of the subject; fiction conceals enough of the facts so that the truth can be read.”

• For Prosser, fiction functions as "a tactical means for the transgendered writer to deflect [...] fascination with the literal" (193).

• He argues: "Stone Butch Blues passes as fiction in the same way that Jess finally passes as a man: neither really does, both intentionally fall short, both refuse full cover" (198).

the liminal moment

I drew one cc of hormones into a syringe, lifted it above my naked thigh –and then paused. My arm felt restrained by an unseen hand. No matter how I tried I could not sink that needle into my quadriceps as I'd done hundreds of times before. I stood up and looked in the bathroom mirror. The depth of sadness in my eyes frightened me. I lathered my morning beard stubble, scraped it clean with a razor, and splashed cold water on my face. The stubble still felt rough. As much as I loved my beard as part of my body, I felt trapped behind it. What I saw reflected in the mirror was not a man, but I couldn't recognize the he-she. My face no longer revealed the contrasts of my gender. I could see my passing self, but even I could no longer see the more complicated me beneath my surface. I stared far back into my past and remembered the child who couldn't be catalogued by Sears. I saw her standing in front of her own mirror, in her father's suit, asking if I was the person she would group up and become. Yes I answered her. And I thought how brave she was to have begun this journey, to have withstood the towering judgments. But who was I now –woman or man? .... That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked. (221-222)

how some read it

• transgender divided from transsexual• a decision to make the space-

between male and female a “home.” • ontology: therefore transgender

‘does’ gender without inhabiting it through being.

what focus on passing and the trans-divide occludes

• While Jess does make a “home” of the space-between, speaking of “coming home to [hir] body” multiple times after hir chest refiguration and therefore of finding a home in a body legible as neither male nor female, the book emphasizes other “homes.”

• If ‘home is where the heart is,’ where is Jess’s heart?

thinking about the location of Jess’s feelings

• Just prior to moment when decides to stop hormones, Jess narrates:I took my time in the shower, trying to scrub away the grime of isolation with hot soapy water. Loneliness [engendered through passing] had become an environment –the air I breathed, the spatial dimension in which I was trapped. I sat in a boat on a deathly calm sea, waiting for a breeze to fill my sails. (221)

feelings in silences

• Jess describes "choking on anger" in that opening letter as well as myriad other moments of the book, such that ze doesn't "have the words to tell" "how I [feel] in life" (10).

• After being raped by policemen, Jess notes how ze ‘speaks’ through silence with Theresa: "Since I had no words to bring the woman I loved so much, I gave her all my tenderness" (138).

feelings in silences And metaphorical landscape

• When Jess’s new friend Ben tells hir about his time in jail, Jess narrates: Suddenly, something changed in Ben. His whole body settled into a stillness that frightened me, like the smooth surface of a lake before a storm. I felt the turbulence churning beneath his surface. Ben's hurt was presenting itself. I waited. Pain emerges at its own pace. I sat in silence, my heart pounding. Maybe this was just my imagination [....] But when I looked at Ben I knew I wasn't wrong. The storm was closing in, and it was too late to run. (183)

feelings mirrored through silence

Ben then prevaricates for a moment or so, before returning to prison's impact on him. Jess narrates: And then suddenly it was there, in his eyes, all of his shame [....] I leaned closer to Ben. He looked me in the eyes. In silence, without words, his eyes told me what had happened to him in prison. I didn't look away. Instead, I let him see himself in my own mirror [....]"I never told anyone," Ben said, as though our conversation had been out loud. (184)

umm and this is important because…?

• Paying attention to feelings offers a different way to read Jess’s bodily journey throughout the novel.

• Rather than focusing on what Jess looks like or whether ze passes, we can pay attention to what Jess feels like.

• This kind of paying attention can produce a better understanding of transgender phenomena. It can be a way of thinking with.

feeling and space• Sara Ahmed argues that "heteronormativity

functions as a form of public comfort by allowing bodies to extend into spaces that have already taken their shape," for "the surfaces of social as well as bodily space 'record' the repetition of acts, and the passing by of some bodies and not others."

• Ahmed argues that "one does not notice this as a world when one has been shaped by that world, and even acquired its shape” (148).

• The normative subject doesn’t experience in moving through a world in which his/her/hir shape conforms, without chafing, with the spaces through which he/she/zie moves.

Ahmed on queer discomfort• "When faced by the 'comforts' of heterosexuality,"

queer subjects feel uncomfortable, as "the body does not 'sink into' a space that has already taken its shape."

• Ahmed describes this discomfort as "a feeling of disorientation," a "sense of out-of-place-ness and estrangement [that] involves an acute awareness of the surface of one's body, [...] when one cannot inhabit the social skin, which is shaped by some bodies, and not others" (148).

• Arguing that "we can posit the effects of 'not fitting' as a form of queer discomfort," Ahmed suggests that we might find in that awkwardness "a discomfort which is generative, rather than simply constraining or negative;" thus discomfort "is ... not about assimilation or resistance, but about inhabiting norms differently" (155).

reading Jess’s bodily changes

• Jess #1: non-passing “he-she,” constantly assaulted by a world in which ze does not and cannot fit.

• Jess #2: on hormones, Jess passes. however, during this time, Jess “feels like a ghost” (213), so far from the touch of the world ze writes: "passing didn't just mean slipping below the surface, it meant being buried alive” (173).

• Jess #3: off hormones, post-surgery, Jess comes back into a friction-laden proximity with a gender normative world. by choice. in light of the decision not to pass, ze notes: "I will never be able to nestle my skin against the comfort of sameness" (224).

uncomfortable warrior

• Jess’s ultimate decision, while yes about picking a neither/nor on the man or woman question, is also about a form of trans discomfort.

• Jess makes of hir body a space for rough contact and productive discomfort, through which ze not only chafes against but pushes back at a gender-normative world.

• Jess’s “stone” becomes a hard contact with the world, through which ze pushes back and reshapes it rather than letting it shape hir.

the assignment!

• explain, contextualize, analyze.• three terms need to be critical, three

terms are up to you (although obviously need to be related to course materials).

• see board (or powerpoint?) for group attempt.