Thoughts on The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto

1.

"Given this circumstance in which a minority discourse comes to ground in the physical, a counterdiscourse is critical. But it is difficult to generate a counterdiscourse if one is programmed to disappear. The highest purpose of the transsexual is to erase h/erself, to fade into the "normal"population as soon as possible. Part of this process is known as constructing a plausible history-- learning to lie effectively about one's past. What is gained is acceptability in society. What is lost is the ability to authentically represent the complexities and ambiguities of lived experience, and thereby is lost that aspect of "nature" which Donna Haraway theorizes as Coyote-- the Native American spirit animal who represents the power of continual transformation which is the heart of engaged life. Instead, authentic experience is replaced by a particular kind of story, one that supports the old constructed positions."

2.

"To attempt to occupy a place as speaking subject within the traditional gender frame is to become
complicit in the discourse which one wishes to deconstruct. Rather, we can sieze upon the textual
violence inscribed in the transsexual body and turn it into a reconstructive force. Let me suggest
a more familiar example. Judith Butler points out that the lesbian categories of "butch" and
"femme" are not simple assimilations of lesbianism back into the terms of heterosexuality.
Rather, Butler introduces the concept of cultural intelligibility, and suggests that the
contextualized and resignified "masculinity" of the butch, seen against a culturally intelligible
"female" body, invokes a dissonance that both generates a sexual tension and constitutes the
object of desire. She points out that this way of thinking about gendered objects of desire admits
of much greater complexity than the example suggests. The lesbian butch or femme both recall
the heterosexual scene but simultaneously displace it. The idea that butch and femme are
"replicas" or "copies" of heterosexual exchange underestimates the erotic power of their internal
dissonance. [44] In the case of the transsexual, the varieties of performative gender, seen against
a culturally intelligible gendered body which is itself a medically constituted textual violence,
generate new and unpredictable dissonances which implicate entire spectra of desire. In the
transsexual as text we may find the potential to map the refigured body onto conventional gender
discourse and thereby disrupt it, to take advantage of the dissonances created by such a
juxtaposition to fragment and reconstitute the elements of gender in new and unexpected
geometries. I suggest we start by taking Raymond's accusation that "transsexuals divide women"
beyond itself, and turn it into a productive force to multiplicatively divide the old binary
discourses of gender--as well as Raymond's own monistic discourse.

1/2

>>8230569
2.

To foreground the practices of inscription and reading which are part of this deliberate invocation of dissonance, I suggest constituting transsexuals not as a class or problematic "third gender", but rather as a genre-- a set of embodied texts whose potential for productive disruption of structured sexualities and spectra of desire has yet to be explored. In order to effect this, the genre of visible transsexuals must grow by recruiting members from the class of invisible ones, from those who have disappeared into their "plausible histories". The most critical thing a transsexual can do, the thing that constitutes success, is to "pass." [45] Passing means to live successfully in the gender of choice, to be accepted as a "natural" member of that gender. Passing means the denial of mixture. One and the same with passing is effacement of the prior gender role, or the construction of a plausible history."

2/2

>>8230546
>>8230555
>>8230569
>>>/lit/

>>8230588
it's /lgbt related though..

>>8230588

>>>/lit/erally anywhere else

Get this leftist garbage off this board, this is Trump territory you migrant humping terrorist loving faggot

>>8230616
>you migrant humping terrorist loving faggot
She's a tranny though.

>>8230650

I gathered. How does that impede her ability to love terrorists and hump migrants and be a faggot? Having been one myself for about 3 years now, I'd say that aptly describes 99% of trannies.

>>8230710
Trannies don't do the humping.

>>8230616
Um, this is America, land of freedom

>>8230546
Even zizek is more coherent

>>8231205
how am I being incoherent?

>>8231507
im saying the essayist of the essay not you

>>8231517
Oh, what is incoherent about it?

Keep in mind as far as i'm aware it was partly originally written as a response to Janice Raymond's book The Transsexual Empire, which might explain why it seems to jump around and address multiple topics.

>>8231544
because i hate when movies are taken out of context to make a point

>>8231205
i was listening (but not understanding) to zizek babble on as i read this..

>>8231601
Oh come on... Give the essay a chance..

All identity is virtual.

The Empire Strikes Me As Exaggerated.

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>>8231202
>America, land of freedom