More than 25 years later, “My Words” remains foundational in transgender studies, cementing Stryker’s impact as an activist for the transgender community. She concludes her essay: “May your rage inform your actions, and your actions transform you as you struggle to transform your world.” 7 Rage against injustice and the experience of being compared to monsters, Stryker argued, can and should be used by trans people as a catalyst for pursuing justice. By embracing and accepting them, even piling one on top of another, we may dispel their ability to harm us.” 6 She wrote, “…words like ‘creature,’ ‘monster,’ and ‘unnatural’ need to be reclaimed by the transgendered.
This rage could become a part of trans identity that people owned.
Stryker wrote that the rage of the transgender community against this label of “monster” should not only be reclaimed, but also redirected. She referenced contemporary cultural movements-lack of government attention to the AIDS crisis, disruptive political action of organizations like ACT UP and Queer Nation-that provided additional context and personal significance. In “My Words,” Stryker sought to articulate the rage that existed at the heart of trans organizing and reclaim the comparison of transgender people as monsters (specifically Frankenstein’s monster from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). 4 This performance is now famously cited as a critical work and moment that placed Stryker at the forefront of the emerging, coalescing field of transgender studies. 1 A few years later, in 1992-the same year she graduated from Cal-Stryker co-founded with Anne Ogborn 2, Transgender Nation 3, a direct-action activist group that grew out of the San Francisco chapter of Queer Nation, a New York-based LGBTQ activist organization.īarely a year later, in June 1993, Stryker presented her essay, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage,” and performed an excerpted monologue at a 3-day academic conference titled “Rage Across the Disciplines” at California State University, San Marcos.
From her earliest memory, Stryker “always felt was a girl even though had a male body at birth,” but she didn’t start coming out publicly as a transgender woman until the late 80s.
0 kommentar(er)
