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Bisecting History for a Trans Temporality: The “He” and “She” in D’Lo’s “Growing’s Trade Off”

The history of an individual or a community can give vital clues into livelihood, identity, and identity formation. But history comes to mean different temporalities within different spheres of identity. For the normative cis person, life history can span the entirety of life – everything between birth and death is fair game and usable in the cis narrative. But life history takes on a different temporal situation with the trans identity, and only certain events between birth and death are fit for a narrative. How has the non-normative gender identity, specifically the trans identity, had to redefine the temporality of life history? When the non-normative is demanded to narrate for the normative, the history of the oppressed must become readable by the oppressor. This readability has meant that trans narratives have had to categorize and shape history around a cis gaze pivoted around the point of transition, and this has meant the erasure of large portions of a trans person’s narrative. This redefining of historical temporality has demanded that trans people see their lives as the cis world does- in two bisected parts, where the former must be forgotten for the latter to be lived. This forgetting of history is seen in regulative structures that surround trans livelihood – everything from the use of gender pronouns to the inhabiting of appropriate spaces in lieu of the “wrong” spaces has reminded trans identities of the cis oppression that surrounds their lives and narratives. In his poem “Growing’s Trade Off”, D’Lo takes readers through a quick life history- but doesn’t keep them from the history that he’s expected to erase as a trans person. He writes about all that he’s expected to forget as a trans man and how his history and identity have been forced to contort themselves into smaller and smaller boxes so that he remains a respectable trans person. D’Lo asks readers to challenge the notion of history forgetfulness, arguing that all parts of his life, however unrespectable, are valid, useful, and readable. He argues that he embodies an interesting and useful boundary between masculine and feminine, and that neither his preferred gender pronouns nor his gender presentation should give anyone reason to exclude him or his narrative. To unpack D’Lo’s poetry, the works of Jason Cromwell, Jay Prosser, and Emi Koyama will be used. In this poetic narrative, D’Lo uses the concepts of gender pronouns and gender presentation as metaphors to show his audience the effects of cis oppression and categorization, and proves that trans narratives, inhabiting a useful borderland, must be seen in full, historical amnesia notwithstanding.

In writing the unreadable, D’Lo presents to readers aspects of his transsituatedness that he’s expected to erase or to normalize. His narrative recalls points set forth by Jason Cromwell in “Queering the Binaries: Transsituated Identities, Bodies, and Sexualities”. In his essay, Cromwell contends that transsituated identities and bodies can offer a thought-provoking and liberating gender discourse. Cromwell writes on the multiplicity of transidentity. He quotes an interviewee to argue that “transgender and transsexual are genders that exist outside the binary of two” (Cromwell, 512). However, this binary-shattering gender situatedness is lost because in order to be a “good – or successful – transsexual person, one is not supposed to be a transsexual person at all” (512). In short, the pre-transition history must be forgotten, “paralyzed, and erased, left in an operating room” (511). And in doing so, “[transmen] are supposed to pretend [they] never spent fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty plus years in female bodies, pretend that the vestigial female arts some of [them] never lose were never there” (512). But transsituated identities and bodies have the power to disturb the cis and hetero norms, and demand a double take at the categories demanded of people, both trans and not trans.

D’Lo’s frustrations at his isolations are in line with Cromwell’s arguments. In “Growing’s Trade Off”, readers are journeyed through D’Lo’s past and present, and asked to consider his non-normative arguments. A quick look into D’Lo’s past reveals a young boy, who learned of “misogynistic ways” and “how a patriarch should act”, and yearned for the “love from a she” (D’Lo, 115). Upon puberty, his body started changing to reveal growing breasts. And so D’Lo decided that “a girl [he] was to become, even if it killed [him]” (116). In these formative years, he lived and learned as a woman of color. Here, he reminds readers that he has spent a foundational part of his life as female-embodied, living and experiencing life as a woman of color. And although he contends that these years of experience have taught him how to be a better feminist, how to recognize and perhaps fight oppression and sexism, this part of his history is to be forgotten. In order to live as a cis-normative person who goes by “he”, any woman or “she” of his identity must be forbidden and erased. D’Lo, like the interviewees of Cromwell, must fail to narrate and act out the “vestigial female arts” (Cromwell, 512). Only then, when he fits into the cisnormative binary, would his identity be deemed a “successful” and “legitimate” transidentity and would he be read and understood as “normal”. But “although normal should be in the eye of the beholder, frequently it is a moral command” (512). And in complying with this morality, the transsituated person becomes the acceptable and readable, complying with respectability politics of the cis world. However, Cromwell argues that the unreadable, the “non-normal”, continuously gets erased by those acting in systems and positions of power (512). Readers see this in D’Lo’s experience, as he sees various erasures by various positions of power. In his bisected life, he is first erased of his transgender identity by the cisnormative world and gaze that “were already suspecting” of young D’Lo’s gender variance and which pressure him to present and live as a girl (D’Lo, 116). Cisnormativity demands of D’Lo a first, and important, erasure. The demand by this system of power is to melt D’Lo of his trans self and contort his present and future lives and identities to fit cisnormative standards.

Since then, D’Lo reveals to readers that he’s moved to New York and gone through transition and top surgery. He further reveals that it’s been five years that he’s made the masculine pronouns “mandatory” (D’Lo, 116). However, now, a second erasure is demanded of D’Lo after his surgery and masculine pronoun usage. So that in becoming more comfortable with himself and his life in his process of “growing, he’s had to face a different form of isolation, a “trade-off”. He writes that “no Womyn’s community wants [him] anymore” (116), despite his alliance and strong feminist standing. He argues for these communities and readers to recognize that “nothing has changed except a word” and that word is “he” (117). But, alas, he is “tip-toed around, rejected again” (117). Now, feminist spaces and Womyn’s communities exclude him based off his preferred gender pronouns. For them, D’Lo’s identity as a feminist and transgender person doesn’t fall in line with the masculine pronouns. His pronouns precede his history and identity, and keep him from spaces and discourses that he seeks to be a part of. Now, the feminist space acts as the cisnormative system of power that erases D’Lo’s past as a female-bodied individual. While the former experience demanded that D’Lo “normalize” his present and future identities, the latter asks that D’Lo not mention or highlight his past. In both scenarios, D’Lo is expected to narrate his identity and his life during both temporalities so that they are “viewed as culturally legitimate”, first as a legitimate cis person, and then as a legitimate trans person (Cromwell, 512). To be a legitimate cis person during the former part of his life, he is expected to preemptively erase his present and future masculinity. And to be a legitimate trans person during the latter part of his life, he is expected to forget and erase his lived experiences, lessons, and memories that came with past femininity.

The narrative presented in the poem demands that the reader ask where the bifurcation of a trans history takes place, and at what point the cis-legible trans history begins. Such questions recall the theories set forth by Jay Prosser in “A Skin of One’s Own: Toward a Theory of Transsexual Embodiment”. Prosser discusses the embodiment of trans identities and experiences through the skin and body, as related to identity and the self. Prosser suggests that the two- the material and immaterial, the body and self- are nonexclusive. He sees the skin as “psychic/somatic interface” (Prosser, 72). The skin is “the primary organ underlying the formation of the ego…making us who we are” (65). The skin and the identity, the external and the internal, therefore, are not detangled.

D’Lo posits that his inclusion into womyn’s communities and feminist spaces and discourse be premised on the undeniable fact that he lived as female-embodied. Here, D’Lo acts out the theories set forth by Prosser. He deems that his identity cannot be pulled apart and seen as separate from his lived, fleshly experiences. And declares that his flesh and experiences were indeed feminine in how they were read and their experiences formulated. In his years as a female-embodied person, he navigated, learned of, and understood the world through his body and flesh. D’Lo learned about systems of privilege, sexism, and power. Furthermore, he “learned how to be a strong woman” and built communities among peers and mentors. He learned of oppression and of racialized sexism because he in fact lived as a woman of color, and thereby possessed the skin and ego of a woman of color. This informed his feminist ideology. And these experiences, forever a part of his flesh and, thus, his identity, cannot be stripped away, even by transition. Transition comes to represent the moment that is defined by the cis world as the pivot in a trans life. At this moment, the trans person can leave an unreadable trans exterior and enter a cis-legible story of gender normativity. As Prosser states, the body provides the encasing that supports the ego and the identity. D’Lo’s experiences support this, as he argues for his inclusion into feminist spheres on the grounds of his lived experiences and physicality. He warns that the change in the pronoun usage comes only because of the limitations of language. However, his skin ego and felt matter have remained constant and unchanged and it is precisely these that make him the person he is today, an even stronger feminist.

D’Lo argues that in inhabiting a transidentity, he can potentially provide an insight and situated knowledge as one who borders both worlds of feminine and masculine. He embodies what Emi Koyama describes in “Whose Feminist Is It Anyway? The Unspoken Racism of the Trans Inclusion Debate”. Here, Koyama describes the universalization that is demanded of trans narratives in womyn’s only spaces and discourse. Koyama discusses racialized gender differences between women as setting experiences apart, and the silent racism that’s enacted when women’s stories, especially cis women’s stories, are deemed the same on the grounds of sex and gender. She ends her essay by arguing for trans narratives that tells of lived experiences and that resist being universalized and homogenized.

D’Lo resists the homogenization of his own narrative by an outside world throughout his poem. He constantly highlights his past and lived experiences to demand an attention to the parts of him that make him different and unique. He wants readers to see and acknowledge both the similarities and differences that he has with women. He presents this when he writes, “And so I tell them about my changes, but plead with them to see how nothing has changed except a word, that I still look and sound the same” (D’Lo, 117). In this sentence, he is presenting his divergence and convergence with womyn’s only spaces. He is different by a word, but similar in the history and experiences he holds. This is reminiscent of Koyama’s plead for the trans narrative to recognize and make visible the differences that exist. Koyama uses a powerful analogy to argue that “transsexual people occupy the borderlands where notions of masculinity and femininity collide” (Koyama, 704). And it is in this borderland that they can foster the power needed to expose the “unnaturalness of the boundary that was designed to keep them out” and to fulfill their activist strength (704). D’Lo’s borderland is presented to readers only because he describes his lived experience in full, pre- and post-transition, feminine and masculine, refusing to censor and “trim the fat” of his transsituated life and identity. But it is exactly because he inhabits a borderland and wants to foster his activist and unique power that he is silenced from a second source of cis oppression. D’Lo asks readers to consider who this new exclusionary “gate keeper” is that is keeping him out, the one that forces him to face a new isolation post-transition.

D’Lo finds his narrative further erased for a different type of regulation- that of racialized normalization. When D’Lo mentions that it was as a woman of color that he learned of “oppression and more importantly, knowledge, power and divinity”, he reminds readers that his race played a large factor in his understanding of himself and the world around him (D’Lo, 116). In this marginalized existence, he came to understand the oppressions that women of color face. And it is because of this that D’Lo argues for his inclusion into feminist spheres- he knows of women’s oppressions, and specifically of the oppressions of women of color, and could, for this reason, be a powerful ally. The knowledge that the woman of color possesses, D’Lo possesses – not secondhand, but firsthand – because of his past experiences, flesh, and situatedness. But his exclusion on the grounds of his gender identity throw him into a categorization he does not wish to belong to, a category that deems him separate from and unknowing of the woman, a category that refuses to look at his history because of the way he chooses to present and be regarded today. His divergence with the women’s communities is chosen over his convergence in order to maintain an operative mode of homogenization. Instead of inviting the complex but liberating discourse that someone like D’Lo can bring, these communities choose to silence and ostracize him in order to keep the homogenized discourse surrounding gender and race that is within a comfort zone.

The erasure that D’Lo faces at the hands of the Womyn’s communities is both transphobic and racist. To assume that D’Lo can’t know at all what being a woman is like because his experiences are entirely different assumes that “all other women’s experiences are the same, and this is a racist assumption” (Koyama, 702). Since D’Lo may now be seen to experience and possess male privilege, he is isolated. But this doesn’t come fully thought out with the conclusion that “not all women are equally privileged or oppressed” (702). D’Lo contends that if it weren’t for the limitations of language and its demand for him to choose a gender pronoun, or the bifurcation of his transsituated life temporality, his differences with the women’s communities are few. But the cis ignoring of any half of his life makes it easy to produce violence and erasure against him. And his current gender presentation and pronouns now relegate him to the same position that women of color were relegated to in lesbian feminist spheres – homogenized so that a “lowest common denominator” mentality was taken up in regards to oppression. The lowest common oppression was found – that which came with being a woman – and everything else was simply ignored. But the differences among women is inherent and important, and Koyama points this out through a powerful counterdiscourse to the “no phallus” rule set by womyn-born womyn only music festivals: “white skin is just as much a reminder of violence as a penis” (703). D’Lo declares that he “learned what it was to be a woman of color” and learned of “oppression and more importantly, knowledge, power, and divinity” (D’Lo, 116). And while this should be enough to highlight the specific lived experience that D’Lo possesses, it is instead erased. And this comes to be another factor of D’Lo’s narrative erasure. His racialized experiences get erased in favor of a more “comfortable” discourse that ignores race and racism, just as his gendered experiences get erased to upkeep trans respectability, where pre-op life is amputated off the biography in order for the post-op life to live in a cisnormative world.

D’Lo’s “Growing’s Trade Off” highlights the notions and expectations of narrative erasure that trans people have to endure. The poem shows all the ways that D’Lo has had to edit his narrative, leaving parts out in order to fit in and navigate safely during specific times. In looking at D’Lo’s poetry through the lenses set forth by Jason Cromwell, Jay Prosser, and Emi Koyama, readers can begin to see how D’Lo inhabits a cisnormative world of labels and categories that erase his lived experiences, separating his identity from his physically lived reality as a trans person of color. D’Lo asks readers to question how the categories of gender, the cisoptic, and the limitations of language have forced him to face a “trade-off” in his growing process. His narrative turns the attention and spotlight to the different oppressive forces at work that demand he either erase his future or his past, both in order to live as a cisnormative, respectable trans subject, and to further brush off his racialized experiences to be a racially homogenous comfort zone. But in giving the reader a full disclosure, a manifesto of the transsituated life, D’Lo asks how “growing’s trade-off” can become just “growing”, for himself, his narrative, and for larger society as a whole, and how the trans identity, in its full, unadulterated, and un(cis)censored version, can catalyze this conversation.

Bibliography

Cromwell, J. Queering the Binaries: Transsituated Identities, Bodies, and Sexualities. In Stryker, S. & Aizura, A (Eds.) The Transgender Studies Reader (509-520). New York and London: Routledge, 2006. Print.

D’Lo. “Growing’s Trade-Off”. In Tolbert, T. & Peterson, T. (Eds.) Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (115-117). New York: Nighboat Books, 2013. Print.

Koyama, E. Whose Feminism Is It Anyway?: The Unspoken Racism of the Trans Inclusion Debate. In Stryker, S. & Aizura, A (Eds.) The Transgender Studies Reader (698-705). New York and London: Routledge, 2006. Print.

Prosser, J. A Skin of One’s Own: Toward a Theory of Transsexual Embodiment. In Prosser J. Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality. (61-96). New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Print.

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