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nokingsonlyfooles · 2 years ago

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Head-Wigs and Not Even an Inch

Abigail Thorn made me cry last night.

I mean, I knew this was not outside the realm of possibility. I presumed she would produce a work of stunning artistic beauty and overwhelm my jaded brain with some Profound Meaning. Or, fat chance, maybe she’d trip over something I’d written and tear it to pieces like a hamster going to town on a cardboard tube. Or maybe I’d go back to London, and spill my drink on her shoes in a dark club, and she’d thrash me with a riding crop — that’s slightly more likely than someone with a decent platform noticing my writing, at this point.

But, uh, no. That’s not how it went.

We pay money to get the bonus episodes of Kill James Bond. You should too. In fact, if you don’t, you’ll be lacking some context for this. But most of my work goes out into the void without context, so to hell with it. You can watch a theatrical version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch for free, on YouTube. Or you can probably pirate the film version with a clean conscience, I don’t think any of those performers are seeing much compensation from sales at this point.

We haven’t been listening to the bonus episodes in order. We often try to watch something close to the version of whatever-film they’re doing, and then listen to the episode with context. We’ve heard them mention Hedwig, and it seemed to be a profound, emotional experience. I really wanted to see Hedwig first. Well, we found a Hedwig available for free and we watched it. They tried to update it a bit, and I found that off-putting. A lot of the tropes in play are dated — “#problematic” in some ways, and genuinely hurtful in others. If you’re going to update something like that, you can’t just throw in a reference to Harry Potter and Title 42 and call it good. Preserve it in its original messy form for us, or rewrite the whole thing — if they’ll let you.

The way the actor playing Hedwig moved and sat in her (the character uses she/her and I have no idea about the actor) short skirt bothered me too. She had shorts on underneath, but I don’t think we were supposed to know that yet. “Nobody has ever told this person how they’re supposed to sit in a skirt,” I said to the spouse. Like, it wasn’t even as if she knew and had decided to ignore it. If one were transfeminine, or faking it to get out of East Berlin, someone would’ve mentioned it. “Maybe it’s for the character,” he said. Maybe it was. You could read it that way. But there’s a read on this where transness is artifice, and I don’t like that read very much. I hope that wasn’t what they were going for.

The ending could be read that way too. It’s all very surreal and that has the potential to be read a lot of different ways, but a male (or male-presenting) actor winds up bare-chested in shorts and the female one ends in a wig and a dress and they both seem very happy about it. One could say, “Well! Glad all that gender confusion’s cleared up! Now they’ve stopped pretending to be something they’re not!” I don’t like that the possibility is left open like that. It feels slimy and centrist.

But the music was great and there were some excellent moments and I was eager to hear the whole thing get dissected by some trans folks.

About a half hour into it, they were discussing John Cameron Mitchell, who identified as a gay man at the time and has since refined it to nonbinary with he/him pronouns. Hedwig’s gender is messy — she’s a fictional character written by an enby who was still in egg form, from a time before people were expected to define their transness as binary or nonbinary. Abi acknowledged the nonbinary actor/writer/director, and mentioned that there’s a lot of pressure to define your gender neatly these days… And said, “No.” That’s not it. Hedwig is a woman like her. Period.

I had been saying to the spouse (we talk over the podcast; we get excited) that I saw a lot of myself in Hedwig’s disaster gender, and in that way you could read the ending as her deciding to stop splitting herself between her popular, cis-passing, sellout persona, and the real, messy her. And then Abi cut me off, and I said, laughing, “Oh my god, just hip-check my identity right into the orchestra pit! What… What…” And I started to cry.

I didn’t have my guard up. I didn’t expect it. And I’d never taken a hit quite this way before. This wasn’t being denied the validity of my existence, this was the validity of my artistic merit. Abigail Thorn, a demonstrably smart person with a lot of theatre experience who loves writing and acting, will not be requiring me or John Cameron Mitchell for her interpretation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Not even as a possible read. Please, go find yourselves in some other character, enbies. Let the transwomen have her.

…To the point where “Hansel” is treated like a modern-day deadname of a real person, when all we know for sure is that the character got rid of it to get out of East Berlin and she doesn’t use it anymore. It could be like that, but by the end of this, “Hedwig,” another name and gender she did not choose for herself, might be a deadname too. I’m not saying it has to be like that, but it’s not so ridiculous that we need to dismiss it unsaid, is it? Especially given that the goddamn originator of the character has been on a similar journey and decided to keep “John” and he/him for the moment. A person can do that and still kick their assigned gender to the curb, you know?

I didn’t need Hedwig to be about me and only me, I just needed the possibility to be left open and discussed a little bit. Another trans egg movie, but perhaps a nonbinary one this time. Like Speed Racer, it went hard and fell short! That’s all. I didn’t even know I needed that! Until Abi said I couldn’t have it.

The spouse stopped the podcast and comforted my surprised tears. He gave me a nonbinary read — which is not hard to do! — and said I deserve to be seen. I said, “I know why she said it. I do. It’s too close to their (hers and Alice’s) own experience and they don’t want to see anything else. It’s emotion-based. But… But… Nonbinary actor (and writer/director/producer/singer)! …What about Dev?” Dev really took a backseat on this one. They saw themself in Yitzhak, and Yitzhak isn’t the main character, and Abi and Alice were so into Hedwig, and they’re all friends. Yeah. I mean, I understand that too. Back off and let your friends have this one, it’s clearly important to them both.

I wanted to hear the rest of it, because it made Alice and Abi feel seen, and a lot of other trans folks too. Yeah, there’s a lot in it that aged like milk — cringy and outdated even when the film was made — but there’s a lot of valid queer experience in there, too, warts and all. I was surprised as hell that, in the end, Abi supports the “Tommy isn’t real” theory and believes this is a story about uniting one person and making yourself feel whole. And yet, she reiterated, “No.” It’s not about being nonbinary. It’s about reconciling with the male-gendered stuff you try to cut out of you when you transition. Dev and Alice were at least willing to allow that nonbinary was possible, if not quite willing to delve into it, but not Abi. Splitting yourself in two is a binary trans thing! As are many, many other things about Hedwig that I related to.

As an enby who came up with the “splitting yourself in two” metaphor while still in egg form, for a fictional character of my own who is also still in egg form, please let me tell you — please let me tell someone — that that’s not true. I didn’t meet Hedwig until last night, but I know about performing your acceptable, cis-passing, assigned gender and hiding all the “garbage” that doesn’t fit. I know what it is to be crammed into a false persona that gets a lot of love, while the real you, when you let it out, is only worthy of snarling punk lyrics into a mic at a dingy seafood restaurant with a hostile audience.

And, oh my god, do I know what it is to have a piece of you that will not come off, and prevents you from fitting fully into either binary gender. It can feel like a broken piece, like a scar, like a botched surgery you didn’t need that was inflicted on you… But it doesn’t have to be literally that. Hedwig, both the play and the person, doesn’t seem to have much use for physical reality. She’s here to unload her emotional reality, and she doesn’t care about any other real things she might damage along the way.

KJB were rather amazed that Hedwig chose to redefine herself by a (medically impossible) surgical accident. How brave of her to own her trauma like that. But I wonder, is it trauma? Or is it the only path a nonbinary egg in 1998 could see to gain an outside that expressed his inside? This isn’t what any of you wanted me to have, this isn’t even what I want to have, but it’s still me. It’s what I have to work with. (All signs point to “Tommy,” as a character, being at least a closeted gay guy who would’ve been fine if the “front of” Hedwig had been a penis, but it isn’t. It’s not quite anything at all, and he flees because that’s just too much for him to handle. Hedwig already is one of those androgynes she envies; she doesn’t need an Adam, she doesn’t need him. But she loves him/her cis-passing self, and she’s not yet ready to let him go.)

I don’t know what it is to actually try living as the other binary gender, I wasn’t active enough in queer circles to really feel that pressure to conform to the binary before I hatched. But I see it now, and I feel the same instinctive revulsion that Hedwig feels about being a divorced housewife in a trailer in Arizona. That’s not me either! Did I spend all this time and energy escaping one box, only to be trapped in another? Must I content myself with this simply because I don’t want to go back to the way I was? Is this only way I can get a green card that lets me access a queer space? To put on an ugly wig and pretend I’m more palatable?

To me, the revelation about wigs is not “I could be happy as ANY woman!” but, “This is a performance… This is all a fucking performance! This isn’t me, this is a hat someone put on my head. It comes off! I can have another hat! I can have all the hats!” And, selfishly, she denies Yitzhak that same joy, because he wears it better and seems happier. Hedwig clings to her suffering so tightly, it’s such a fundamental part of her identity, that she can’t bear to be around trans joy. No. There is no room for trans joy here, only trans spite. This story is about me. I don’t like transwomen, I don’t like transmen, and I sure as hell don’t like myself (yet)! In the end, after a lot more suffering, she’s willing to let that go.

In the end, Abi says she knows a lot of transwomen who seem to model themselves on Hedwig, and she wants them to know that isn’t how they have to be. They don’t have to choose between being just like a cis woman, or being a monstrous, chaotic, damaged other. You can be… Better than cis! Yes, says the cast of KJB, laughing, we are better than you! We are THE FUTURE! Three friends, having a ball on a podcast, trans joy at its finest — but you don’t find humour in feigning cruelty if you haven’t had some of that cruelty directed at you. This joy formed around a grain of spite. Not only does one often feel they have to be better than cis people, but when you’re still unhatched and stuck on the outside looking in, trans folks really do seem better than you. At least they know what their deal is.

I get it. I do. Because Hedwig fits me too. We all have our reasons to put on that perfectly ridiculous blonde wig and take the form of Hedwig, the Destroyer. Hedwig, the Chaotic. Hedwig, the Liar. Hedwig, the Truth. Hedwig, the Unrepentant Disaster. Hedwig, give me strength! But, it comes off. Look. It is literally a head-wig, a costume for your brain. I know sometimes you find a new wig and you really, really like it, and you become very attached and you want it to be just yours forever and ever, maybe even to the point of calling it your real hair, but… Someone else could still wear that same wig and feel just as happy as you, or maybe even happier. Maybe you’ll find a wig you like even better too. Transitioning isn’t just one and done, and Hedwigs don’t have to be forever. We do know this, don’t we?

Gender is a performance. Gender is a Hedwig. A lot of other things that you consider immutable parts of your identity are Hedwigs too. They are as real as any other social construct, but if you don’t like them or need them, you can just take them off. Sometimes it’s hard and it hurts, but I promise you can. Like Hedwig the character, or whoever that is, does. Inevitably, she must pick some new clothes, maybe new pronouns and a new name, too, but she’s not obligated to do that on camera for us. We can’t force her to say “Aha, see? This identity suited me all along!” No. We’re not entitled to know her or define her. She will be doing that for herself, later, as a whole person. What is so scary about the ending, what makes it look like a detransition instead of a synthesis, is that we insist on gendering her naked body as a male head-wig. Wouldn’t she wear something else if that wasn’t who she was? Well, maybe not. Or maybe so, but it’s her decision, not ours. Self-expression is not the Self, it just helps to define and validate the Self. Hedwigs are extremely fucking important for defining and validating the Self!

So, you know, you have to be willing to share.

#hedwig and the angry inch #kill james bond #nonbinary #transgender #deep dives #long post #abigail thorn #alice caldwell-kelly #devon #messy genders #messy is good - messy leaves rooms for lots of interpretation #yours and mine and theirs #you are valid #just - ya know- ow - the orchestra pit is painful #🐸🧠#🐸✏#🐸🎨

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