@RedTheLoveless
aight so I cut out the MLA stuff, but the works cited shall remain
here it is
A Monster's Rage
Over 200 years ago, Mary Shelly created one of her most successful literary masterpieces, Frankenstein. Soon, one of the characters, Victor Frankenstein’s monster, is what would be known as the symbol for the Transgender Rage movement, for both pro-trans and anti-trans alike. However, this symbolism begs the question of why. The answer to that: because Frankenstein’s monster is a representation of the unreasonable exile and understandable rage of transgender experiences.
One of the ways a connection between Frankenstein’s monster as a representation of the transgender experience, as the monster’s body and a transgender body is described as both beautiful and disgraced. As described by a transsexual person, a person who medically transitioned from assigned sex to their correct sex, “The transsexual body is an unnatural body. It is the product of medical science. It is a technological construction. It is flesh torn apart and sewn together again in a shape other than that in which it was born…. Like the monster, I am too often perceived as less than fully human due to the means of my embodiment…” (My). The view of a transsexual body, both for anti-trans and pro-trans, is that of a medical procedure, to change one part of the body into something else, to accommodate the patient. It is factually considered an unnatural body, as it has been altered, just as any person who underwent surgery would also consider some part of their body “unnatural” and “changed”. However, when a person does this to correct their sex into what gender they identify, it is then viewed as “monstrous” and “less than human”. This same view is used when Victor Frankenstein describes his creation as the monster finally wakes. “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!–Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath…” (Shelly 35). Frankenstein’s monster is a product of unorthodox medical experimentation by Victor Frankenstein, such as the transsexual body is a result of wanting a procedural change of their sex. Even Victor Frankenstein’s view of his creation lines up with that of feeling mixed emotions at his accomplishment. Through the view and experience of altered forms, Frankenstein’s monster provides the characterization of the transgender experience.
Another way Frankenstein’s monster is a representation of the transgender experience by undergoing exile from his only family and community, his creator, Dr. Frankenstein, just as transgender youth encounter exile and alienation from their parents, friends, and even their community.
“Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.” “Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall.” (Shelly 68)
As shown with this quote, the monster has been isolated from obtaining happiness and the proper upbringing of a family support network, as Frankenstein opts to abandon his creation. Frankenstein even says he’d rather fight his “child” than give the monster community and sanctuary. This reaction is also that of the common reaction of parents being told that their child is transgender, as demonstrated in a survey for youth homelessness, “Family rejection and discrimination and violence have contributed to a large number of transgender and other LGBQ-identified youth who are homeless in the United States – an estimated 20-40% of the more than 1.6 million homeless youth” (“Housing”). As the quote states, trans youth make up a considerable amount of the homeless population, as they have been shunned by their family and kicked out of other communities, just like the monster was exiled from his creator, all based on nothing substantial enough to warrant such a reaction.
A third way that Frankenstein’s monster has been a representation of transsexual experiences is also the range of emotions, from discontented to rageful and wanting change. In an essay written by the founder of the Transgender Rage movement, Susan Stryker states:
I sought instead to dissolve and recast the ground that identity genders in the process of staking its tent. By denaturalizing and thus deprivileging nontransgender practices of embodiment and identification, and by simultaneously enacting a new narrative of the wedding of self and flesh, I intended to create new territories, both analytic and material, for a critically refigured transsexual practice. Embracing and identifying with the figure of Frankenstein's monster, claiming the transformative power of a return from abjection, felt like the right way to go. (“Transgender”)
Stryker extends her boiling rage at the frustrating situation she has been put in, and instead of letting hold her back, she used it to progress her way into a new era. With this, she embraced the identity of the monster instead of trying to reject it, owning any insult and changing it to a symbol of representation, as she carved the way with anger as her fuel. This is directly paralleled by the monster’s emotions and reaction after being denied basic decency.
“Thus I relieve thee, my creator,” he said, and placed his hated hands before my eyes, which I flung from me with violence; “thus I take from thee a sight which you abhor. Still thou canst listen to me, and grant me thy compassion…. Hear my tale; it is long and strange… you will have heard my story, and can decide. On you it rests, whether I quit for ever the neighbourhood of man, and lead a harmless life, or become the scourge of your fellow-creatures….” (Shelly 69).
Susan Stryker mimics the monster’s calm outside portrayal, but as soon as either of them received a violent lashback after asking to be heard, they respond with their internal burning rage. A being can only be pushed so far, only be rejected so much, before their anger turns them into a powerful and dangerous force.
Works Cited
Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012.
Stryker, Susan. My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning NR., 2011.
Stryker, Susan. “Transgender Studies: Queer Theory’s Evil Twin.” No Institutional Affiliation, Project MUSE, 2004, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/54599/summary. 18 May 2019.
“Housing & Homelessness.” National Center for Transgender Equality. National Center for Transgender Equality. 2019.
Note: Yes I realize some terms are outdated, but please keep in mind that I was writing this while closeted to a very conservative school, and had to write from their outside perspective. I understand as I am also trans (agender), and I apologize if any of the terms offend in any way.
