UNDERNEATH all those posts about Jay Prosser’s book, there’s a review of “Police, Adjective,” which is a terrific movie. Skip to here if you are not interested in the Prosser stuff. (Or if you’re only interested in that, the Jay Prosser tag is your friend!) Read more

PEOPLE ARE STILL HAVING SEX (NOT JUST GENDER!): A chapter-by-chapter look at Jay Prosser’s Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality, as promised. The first thing to say is that although Prosser’s style is hyperacademic–this was his dissertation–he’s much clearer than most people who write like this. I mean yeah, “somatic” is really the only word for somatic, but I’m still not convinced that he also needs “anaclitic” and “imbricated” and “cathexis.” But even so, Prosser’s very dry humor is... Read more

TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN!: Now, the introduction. For me the most interesting part here is the critique of the binaries assumed by queer theory: subversive/hegemonic, good=antiessentialist (there is no human nature)/bad=essentialist, transgressive/reinscriptive. Prosser points out that for people who talk very dismissively of binaries in general, queer theorists end up creating a whole lot of their own. And so they have a really hard time considering the body as a sublime fact rather than a banal fiction (that’s... Read more

THE BUTLER DID IT: chapter one: Prosser vs. Judith Butler! This was the hardest chapter for me to fight through, largely because a) Butler’s prose is notoriously dense and b) the body-as-projection shtik she was arguing for struck me as so patently false and silly that I really might just have been misunderstanding her. I mean… I hear so much about how Freud is worth reading as literature, but every time people quote him admiringly, I just stare blankly and... Read more

LOOKING FOR MERCY STREET/WHERE YOU’RE INSIDE-OUT: Ch 2: “A Skin of One’s Own: Toward a Theory of Transsexual Embodiment.” This is my favorite chapter. So rich and chewy! There’s so much to talk about here, so I’ll just pluck out the thing I love most. Prosser connects narratives of people with bodily agnosia–a brain disorder in which their body parts, for example legs or a hand, feel completely alien–with narratives of people who have sensations in “phantom limbs.” For both... Read more

IT TOOK THE CHURCH THREE CENTURIES TO CELEBRATE THE EPIPHANY: Ch 3: “Mirror Images: Transsexuality and Autobiography.” Again we get careful, sympathetic attention to the metaphors and tropes of transsexual autobiography, especially the way in which the doubling effect of a mirror–the eye looking back at itself–can shift from emotionally devastating to enthralling. Prosser boldly opens the chapter with quotations which seem to reinforce the idea that transsexuals are uniquely narcissistic (sort of like us homos!) and proceeds to perform... Read more

“THE TWENTIETH CENTURY? I COULD PICK A BETTER CENTURY OUT OF A HAT!”: Ch 4: Prosser on the transition from “invert” to transsexual, via analysis of The Well of Loneliness and the parallel shift from sexology to psychoanalysis. I admit I didn’t get much from this chapter despite my general interest in how our understandings of sexuality and gender shifted between (say) 1840 and 1940, but people more interested in either Radclyffe Hall or critiques of psychoanalysis might get a... Read more

CAMERA SEPARATE: Epilogue: transsexuality in photography. I did not get a lot from the theory-of-photography here–it seemed somewhat intro-level–but then again, photography and comics are the only visual media where I feel like I really grasp even the intro-level theory, so maybe either I’m missing something or the epilogue is aimed at an audience who haven’t done Paradoxes of the Leica 101. I did find Prosser especially personal and appealing in this chapter, for example in his description of his... Read more

RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION: And now just Eve’s opinion, in case y’all are wondering: The more I think and read about transgender experiences and issues, the more I’m convinced that the Catholic Church can and (I pray) will accommodate some, though as I said above not all, forms of transgendered identity. Specifically, I think Catholic theology affirms many transsexuals’ accounts (and even, as I’ve tried to suggest in this review, offers added strength to their position). The Church has not, as far... Read more

WORDS HAVE MEANING: Victor Morton’s review of “Police, Adjective” gets the philosophical and theological heft of the movie. But I honestly wasn’t perturbed by the “Long Attention-Span Theater” nature of the first 90% of scenes–partly because Morton’s review had made me expect a climax, partly bc the tension between everyday tedium and extraordinary suspense is part of the point of the movie, and partly bc the main actor is just so great. Morton says there’s too much film where he... Read more