Article
Transfiguring desire: Divining the origin of species
Journal of Lesbian Studies
(2017)
Abstract
In this piece, we combine autoethnographic and poetic methods/genres to examine intimate and social experiences we have had as two transmasculine queers with complex sexual and gender histories in an intergenerational relationship. If queerness/transness is a “species,” our title, playing on Darwin, promises an answer to oft-asked problematic questions of queer/trans origins. Refusing to address this question, we instead turn Darwin on himself and examine intimate moments in our lives to show how we have experienced the constant formation and personal evolution of desire and identity. Tracing memories reaching back 28 years for one of us and 58 years for the other, we describe our shifting desire and embodiment and locate ourselves in lesbian, gay, trans, and queer histories. We next investigate how illness, disability, and age difference inflect and shape the ways we understand and relate to each other and intersubjectively make meaning in our present relationship. Our inquiry illustrates our complex positionalities, examines how “dyke legacies” are embodied in our affection and interdependence, and challenges biologized, cisnormative assumptions. Thus, a knowledge formation starting from embodied trans-trans intimate lives can challenge the naturalness and intransigence assumptions in dominant notions of gender, heterosexuality, bodies, relationality, identity, and kinship.
Keywords
- Transgender desire,
- embodiment,
- intergenerational relationship,
- disability,
- queer,
- gender fluidity.
Disciplines
Publication Date
Summer August 17, 2017
DOI
10.1080/10894160.2017.1339179
Citation Information
Sonny Nordmarken and Samuel Ace. "Transfiguring desire: Divining the origin of species" Journal of Lesbian Studies (2017) p. 1 - 12 ISSN: 1089-4160 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sonny-nordmarken/8/