Poetics of Transfag Memory (A Research Outline)
What is the relationship between gay trans men and the(ir) past?
I have a complicated relationship with Lou Sullivan.
As a gay trans man, I guess I am supposed to see him as a forefather of sorts. Don’t get me wrong, I very much respect and am grateful for the work he did both for trans men in general as well as for gay trans men specifically. But there’s a little bit of resentment I feel sometimes in how his memory is brought up. I have literally seen him referenced as “the first gay trans man,” a title which he himself would have disputed given the argument in his biography of Jack Bee Garland. Is there no other history of the transfag except through Lou?
I have been thinking on and off for a while now about “transfag poetics”—the kinds of writing by gay trans men that exists, or a transfag approach to literature. I have a note on my phone collecting potential sources. As I spent another late night rearranging the list in hopes of making something coherent, I noticed a trend around memory: how gay trans men relate to the past. It seems to be a recurring theme. Or at least (perhaps more honest) it’s a theme that I noticed among the objects of inquiry that I am interested in.
I brainstormed some questions, which I’m sharing here just in case it sparks any conversation.
Research questions:
What is the relationship between gay trans men and the(ir) past?
How have gay trans men been portrayed over time, by others and by themselves?
How have gay trans men found and/or written themselves into/within the past?
What are the conditions that have shaped the (im)possibility of transfag existence in (narratives of) the past? How have gay trans men navigated these conditions? (via writing themselves back into history, narrating personal history, articulating themselves as pastless or futuristic, etc.)
Why are sites of the past, history, and memory seemingly so important to gay trans men (in particular)?
Where in the past/history/memory might we locate the transfag? What are the stakes of seeking ourselves in or through the past/history/memory?
How do transfag pasts, histories, and memories connect to and/or disconnect from those of other people and groups?
What do we owe the past? What do gay trans men owe the past and those who lived it? What does the past owe us, if anything?
What do we do if we are unable to locate a transfag past? How do we live our lives today, in the absence of clear records of people “like us”? What do we do if we do find a transfag past but we don’t like what we find?
Potential objects of interest:
James Barry and Anton Prinner: these are the closest individuals I’ve found to definite gay trans men in pre-Lou history (Barry was accused of sodomy though he denied it, and Prinner described himself as a homosexual in his diary). James Barry in particular has an abundance of transphobic depictions of him by historians and novelists. On the other hand, almost no one has written about Prinner.
Ballads and memoirs of the 1600s and 1700s + Alex Myer’s novel Revolutionary: I’m intrigued by the possibility of reading stories about “women who followed their male lover to sea / war” through a transfag lens. I haven’t read Myer’s book about Deborah Sampson/Robert Shirtliff yet (he is a trans man and apparently a descendant of Sampson), but it seems relevant here.
Lou Sullivan’s biography of Jack Bee Garland: This book was more or less Sullivan’s own attempt to find history of gay trans men in history. It has been fairly critiqued for its historical methodology, but I think it’s more interesting to consider it through this lens of transfag poetics of memory.
Transfag historical fiction (EE Ottoman, Peter Darling): There is a burgeoning genre of trans m/m historical fiction! EE Ottoman is definitely the most prolific but others like Austin Chant have also worked in this mode. I think it would be great to look into it in more detail.
Personal memory narratives (Idlewild, Rūrangi): Less focused on capital-H History and more on person relationships to one’s own transfag past, Idlewild and the film/webseries Rūrangi both offer retrospectives from gay trans men in various states of transition.
Zeyn Joukhadar’s Thirty Names of Night: I don’t even know what I’m doing with this one but I’m obsessed with this book and it definitely seems to fit in here.
I’m sure there are many more possible places to explore these questions—drop any recommendations you have in the comments!—but those are some of the ones I’m thinking about. Don’t expect this to turn into an actual research project or anything, I’m just putting this here for fun. But do let me know if you have Thoughts about this as well!