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Abstract

In this autoethnography, I elaborate an analysis of interpersonal aspects of transgender life by narrating my everyday interactions living in a gender-ambiguous body as I begin a sexed transition from female to more masculine. I analyze my affective experiences in moments when I am in geographic and gendered transit, encountering social rejection, and connection. Analyzing my fundamentally relational transgender journey in light of the monster’s life in Shelley’s Frankenstein, I show how indignities I encounter in everyday life feel and how my transgender positionalities are complex. Following Susan Stryker, I proclaim “monstrosity” a tool of resistance and reconnection that can help us build connections across difference—that people of all genders might see ourselves in each other, and that, together, we might work against gender injustice and social distance, and toward a deeper kind of intimacy and freedom for us all.

Keywords

transgender affect autoethnography interaction resistance

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Becoming Ever More Monstrous

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