On cis storytelling

Is it just me, or is the transphobia feeling more concentrated than usual this week? Maybe that’s why, while looking something up in my journal, an entry from last year caught my eye.

Cis storytelling plunges six dimensions when a trans person appears. It’s like watching a cube stretch into a square and then back again, or a marble roll across a sheet of soft plastic. Something like that. A disruption, a warping that makes the story boring and predictable and stupid.

This observation was regarding a transphobic poem I happened to read that day. I can’t remember which cis person wrote the poem, so I won’t speculate on that here (although I do think it was Anne Carson. But I could be wrong.) I don’t much go in for poetry, but I thought the poem was very good, other than its quick and disorienting descent into dull transphobic caricature: there was tube of lipstick involved, maybe even a high-heeled shoe.

Though this descent only consisted of a sentence or two, the poem’s integrity was annihilated; not because the transphobia wasn’t very nice of Anne Carson, or whoever, but because the poem itself was not strong enough to withstand its own flaw. Like how even a mile of flat ink can’t negate a seismograph’s spiking inch of devastation. Or like a glutted coffee filter that bursts with black powder on its way to the bin. Or like a neutron star with bad politics. Clearly I find the problem of cis storytelling to be quite generative in terms of metaphor, perhaps because it’s obvious to me that it has its variants beyond cis people, from stand and modelers, to allistics, to other identities, some I may happen to share.

Write what you know, goes the scribbler’s bromide. But when it comes to gender, cis people tend to disregard this aphorism, either because they don’t know what they don’t know, or else they don’t care. As a result, we get sold on the ingeniousness of Y: The Last Man, the profundity of Boys Don’t Cry (1999), the transgressive potential of Written on the Body¹, all because a (usually straight) cis person convinced some other cis people that they’ve found a fresh new angle on the human experience, when all they’ve really done is defibrillate cliche. I’m relieved to no longer feel humiliated by Hilary Swank’s slack-jawed attempts to butch it up, by Jeff Eugenides putting on his scientist hat like a big boy, by the parade of straight guys winning Oscars for depicting women they would be scared to be seen in public with, but I’m starting to wonder if the second-hand embarrassment isn’t worse.

Unfortunately, not even very good cis writers are immune from this bad habit (like every other red-blooded American gay, I had Autobiography of Red moment, too!). I find myself dwelling on artists whose otherwise pleasurable bodies of work are run through by this void. It’s one thing when the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, who don’t have the range to disappoint, go live with a flatulent take on people who are neither men nor women, or a so-bad-it’s-good 90s erotic thriller with a trans villain/love interest that’s tasteless even by the genre’s standards. It’s another to watch people one consider true artists deadleg their own work from what I can only describe as cowardice—a refusal to inquire, engage, or self-examine.

Rot can be cut out. Ignorance can be educated. But what is to be done with void? Because whether exhibited in single books or over entire careers, these blank spaces are just that: absence. They hollow out work that may otherwise be interesting, vibrant, and multifaceted with meaning. How is it that this lack of imagination can underlay a body of work that is otherwise so richly imagined?

David tweets at @k8bushofficial. Read the earthquake room. Keep reading DAVID to find out when their second novel, X (Catapult, 2022), is available for preorder.

Subscribe to support GOOD ADVICE/BAD GAY, an advice series from an anonymous gay therapist who’s not afraid to hurt your feelings with the truth. (Sample an unlocked post for a taste of what you’re missing.) 100% of funds go to support a rotating selection of mutual aid and reparations projects.

Want advice? Email badgayadvice@gmail.com for a free 3-month subscription.

1. I love this book but come on.