f E M I N O I D
mASHA jENNINGS
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Feminoid Feminoid, apparently but not actually, female (Wiktionary). Google suggested this word instead of humanoid. It fascinates me that Google of all things would suggest the particular rather than the general. I can only think of Google in the general, you think of Google only in the particular. It was honestly the weirdest thing I learned about you.
2
I told you that I want to stop believing in god. That night I had been listening to “Remember Who You Are” by Team Dresch (Captain My Captain). Kaia Wilson sings, “Don’t worry Jesus is dead, and God don’t exist,” and for moment I was cradled in another butch’s arms, waiting for it to last a while. I pray to god: Please blow up this bus with me on it. I am no servant of you. I am no servant of my mother. I am no servant of the United States. Just mark me as you once did Cain. I am cast out. No one believes that I am cast out. My mark is on the inside of my skull. Rather than the dermis beyond it. It's just as permanent.
3
One is not born, but rather becomes, woman. No biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the figure that the human male takes on in society; it is civilization as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between male and the female that is called eunuch. Simone de Beauvoir begins the section of her magnum opus The Second Sex, titled Childhood, with these famous and contentious words. I remember feeling relieved when I first read these words. It meant that I existed somewhere. Similarly, in the book of Matthew, For there are born eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Relief. Existence. In the Bible. That defining of book of what de Beauvoir calls our civilization.
4
My mother is human. My father is not. My father who art in heaven. Feminism, the infinite ‘You’. “Sometimes I think, when it gets too quiet up there, You say to Yourself, ‘What kind of mischief can I play on My friend Tevye?’” (Fiddler on the Roof). You, feminism.
5
Bhanu Kapil writes: Tell me what you know about dismemberment. The dismemberment of my family is firmly in the past. The missing member that is dad leaves me with clear hatred or vague bitterness. The dismemberment of myself is far in some ain’t-never-gonna happen future. The remaining member between my thighs is a constant reminder that I am not actually female. The dismemberment of identity is constantly in my Facebook. The constant commentbattles about who is queer, trans, agender, asexual, etc. etc. etc. Julia Serano writes: we live in a phallus obsessed culture, where we’re all brought up to believe that everything having to do with gender and sexuality somehow revolves around the penis. Penis has always been a wound, was a fun wound to mess with when I was younger. Penis is a void now. Penis is a crumb on my carpet; I haven’t bothered to vacuum up yet. Penis is like this dead Common Tern that I found on the beach, wings splayed, body intact, decapitated by some eagle or other bird of prey, on that dark sand.
6
I say to the cigarette butt on the floor of the bus: You too, have been cast out, within. You too, have been used, useful, a servant. You too, have been provided some care. You too, have been subject to security. You too, have been created for a purpose. You too, are devoid of that knowledge. You too, are burnt, smoked, crushed, left, discarded. You too, are beneath the light, glare. You too, are technofucked like me. You too, are lashing yourself for trying. “It occurs to me that I am America, I'm talking to myself again� (Ginsberg). Yes, talking to yourself. That is what makes us crazy. Crazy enough to be other, within. Crazy enough to be hanging around on the bus, unwanted. Crazy enough to be burnt, smoked, crushed, left, discarded. Crazy enough to hate those who love us for making us ever feel loved. Crazy enough to keep seeking comfort in a world that denies us.
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I have to question the word apparently, in the definition of feminoid. How can you be apparently female? I know that I’m not actually female, but am I apparently female? According to my passing experience with femaleassigned/ftm/transmasculine/etc. people, who gender me as one of their own, I could be considered apparently female. They take me in. Not to mention all the trans women, who’ve walked up to me in trans spaces and asked, So, how long have you been on T? They cast me out. Apparently, I check the ‘F’ box. Apparently, I look like someone to whom maleness comes hard. That’s actually true. That is that prickle of pride when I am missexed in that way.
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The present is less material and inescapable to me. The future is a necessity. The here and now is not enough (Muùoz). The future is a site of the ability to change my body in a way that can resist assimilation as I undergo it. My path to being a professor means being apparently female. I must be employable, I must make myself professional, I must be apparently, a professor. It also means resisting being actually female. I must not give in to legal measures that comfort me into believing that the state can protect me, particularly from itself. I must not be fooled that surgery will make those who hate me, hate me less. As Paul B. Preciado writes: I do not want the male gender that has been assigned to me at birth. Nor do I want the female gender that transsexual medicine can furnish and that the state will award me if I behave in the right way. I don’t want any of it.
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Credits Wiktionary: Feminoid, “Etymology 1”. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/feminoid De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex trans. Constance Borde and Sheila MalovanyChevallier. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Print. ; The Oxford Annotated Bible Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962 (1965). Print. Kapil, Bhanu. Vertical Interrogation of Strangers. Berkeley: Kelsey Street Press, 2001. Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2006. Wiktionary: “ .” https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/feminoid Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: NYU Press, 2009. ; Preciado, Paul B. Testo-Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era, trans. Bruce Benderson. New York: The Feminist Press, 2013. Team Dresch. “Remember Who You Are.” Captain My Captain. Portland: Chainsaw Records, 1996. CD Fiddler on the Roof. Dir. Norman Jewison. Perf. Chaim Topol. United Artists, 1971. DVD. Ginsberg, Allen. “America”. Collected Poems. New York: Harper Perennial, 1984. Print. Masha Jennings 2/29/16 1000 Words.