susan stryker transgender history summary

It’s also about recognizing in transness a potential avenue of saving the planet.Ĭlimate change is probably the most dire issue we face as a species, she explains, continuing to argue that perhaps the best means of addressing the increasingly concrete implications of the impending climate crisis is by reimagining what it means to be human: “If we live in an anthropogenically changing climate, one way to address that is to change what it means to be human. For Stryker, reclaiming the monstrosity of transness is not simply about redirecting that which was once used to vilify trans folks into a reflection of our unique power. When asked to discuss the ways in which reclaiming trans monstrosity might benefit today’s crop of trans folks, Stryker responded in an admittedly “elliptical” fashion. “It's like you take that bad that's directed at you and rather than answering to it, you just redirect that energy back out into the world in another way like a Jiu Jitsu move you don't absorb the impact, you redirect the force of it,” she adds. “ don’t respond to dehumanizing accusations by saying ‘No, I’m not horrible and monstrous,’ but instead redirect the force of the offense.” “I was also drawing on a broader queer methodology.in which what one does is take the negative affect that gets directed at you and change its direction,” she tells them. The other main source of inspiration, she explained, was a mode of resistance she likened to hand-to-hand combat. This grew increasingly apparent as she launched into a speech that sought to reclaim Frankenstein’s monster as an empowering figure, thereby directly challenging popular transphobic readings of the infamous character, particularly by TERFS.

The theorist clearly wasn’t fucking around. True to her word, Stryker approached the podium that day wearing what she’d term “genderfuck drag” - a look comprised of combat boots, threadbare Levi 501s, a black lace bodysuit, a tattered “Transgender Nation” tee, and the rotten cherry-on-top: a necklace made of a six-inch fishing hook hung from a stainless steel chain. “I was intrigued by the prospect of critically examining this rage in a more academic setting through an idiosyncratic application of the concept of gender performativity,” Stryker would later write of her monologue.

This affiliation, coupled with the conference’s call for both academic and performance-based presentations, inspired Stryker to produce a work intended to articulate the prevailing emotion of contemporary trans organizing: rage. At the time, Stryker was a member of Transgender Nation, a militantly queer direct action advocacy group. The occasion for the speech was a three-day academic conference at California State University, San Marcos.

One afternoon in June 1993, a 32-year-old activist and budding historian named Susan Stryker delivered a monologue that would forever alter the course of transgender studies.

Susan stryker transgender history summary