A woman carries a piece of a dead girl she has never met wherever she goes, allowing her to artificially extend her lifespan. If she loses it, she will have to find a replacement immediately or she will suffer a quick but excruciating death. For her entire life, she has waged a war with her own body: unexplained illnesses, unwanted hair growth, and a tumorous appendage between her legs. She is driven to extreme measures to remedy these maladies.
It sounds like the premise of a horror tale, but this could also be my dating profile. It couldn’t do any worse than my last few. The last person who showed any interest in me, and they have been rarer than chicken’s teeth, was the person who made me realize just how “big” the reality of organ transplantation is. I myself, who have lived with chronic illness, death, and hospitalization my entire life, took the idea of needing a dead person’s organ to survive in stride. As a student of mythology, folklore, and anthropology, this reality was not just a medical necessity, a requirement to continue living, but a holy rite in itself: a way to honor and continue the legacy of the dead, even if I had never met the person whilst they still breathed.
But to another person, someone whose experience with the medical system was the occasional vaccination, broken bone, or appendix or tonsil removal, the idea of having your abdomen completely vivisected, liver removed, and then a dead person’s organ attached to your digestive system before being stapled back up is utterly monstrous. Let alone the added baggage that comes with life with a chronic illness: mountains of medications, immunocompromisation, shortened life expectancy, etc. And I thought being trans was a big enough obstacle to my dating life.
Like early seafarers and explorers when they encountered something so outside their understanding that their minds turned to the fantastical and horrific — seals became mermaids, whales into leviathans, elephants into behemoths — so too have the realities of organ transplantation and being transgender become monstrous to others. Certainly the layman may say they are “fine” with the concept of organ transplantation, but you just have to look at the low organ donation rates — and the amount of organ donations that are then denied by the deceased’s families — to see where the public sentiment actually lies. And, likewise, even the staunchest of trans allies may go pale if you start describing the particulars of sex reassignment surgery, or even the amount of needles one has to stick into themselves regularly to keep your hormone levels correct. Because the fact is that organ transplantation and gender dysphoria and the measures taken to remedy it are literal body horror.
Our media reflects this. It was only in the late 20th century that organ transplantation in film was depicted in anything other than a horror film. Brains, hands, limbs, skin, life-changing surgery was reduced to fear of the outsider, of loss of bodily autonomy, of suddenly having a piece of you turn “other.” That you, too, could technically, literally become the living dead. And there have been more than enough articles, essays, and think pieces devoted to the representation of trans people on screen, especially in horror films, that do not need repeating. But, long before the Omegaverse, Team Edward or Jacob, or zombie or Frankenstein boyfriends, there was one man who was portraying the gruesome on-screen as not only beautiful, but downright desirable and sexy.
David Cronenberg’s films have done for paraphilias what Quentin Tarantino’s have done for foot fetishism and not made it feel weird in the process. Sure, making out with a television set and putting fleshy video cassettes into the inexplicable vaginal opening that has appeared on your abdomen might not do anything for you per se, but you can’t deny the fact that watching James Wood caressing an undulating entertainment system whilst Debbie Harry’s lips coo invitingly and seductively on the screen is downright erotic. And Cronenberg does this again and again with car crashes, human flies, gynecology, and typewriters. If watching Peter Weller and Judy Davis take hallucinogenic centipede meat whilst writing sexy sentences in Arabic on an undulating typewriter doesn’t get you a little hot under the collar, then can you really say you’re alive? These depictions aren’t there just for shock value or for just putting something scary or weird on the screen; they are grounded in reality and treated with humanity.
Rarely ever does a character react with horror or revulsion at the body horror in a Cronenberg film. James Woods doesn’t lament his brand new Cronenbussy (thank you, Drew Burnett -Gregory) in Videodrome . Peter Weller is shocked when his typewriter suddenly turns into a giant talking bug, but that doesn’t stop him from rubbing intoxicating bug powder into its asshole like lips at its request in Naked Lunch. And, although Geena Davis is legitimately horrified at Jeff Goldblum’s degenerating transformation in The Fly, she consistently pushes through that because, even under the chitinous hairs and shedded fingernails and teeth, he is still the man she loves, which culminates in one of the most heartbreaking final scenes in horror. Those eyes…
Just because you think something is monstrous does not make it any less human or deserving of love, compassion, or desire. Just because it’s “not for you” doesn’t mean it’s “not for anyone.” Just because Seth Brundle has merged his DNA with that of an insect does not mean he now lacks dignity and mercy. But humanity loves its binaries. And that is really where this horror comes from. Women should be women, men should be men, a single entity should not be combined with another, and the dead should well and truly stay dead.
Ancient Greek and Roman society saw hybrids as monsters. Whilst the Egyptian sphinx was a depiction of majestic royalty, the sphinx in the Oedipus myth was a horrible man-eating monster with a predilection for riddles. If you had the body of a human with the head of an animal in Egypt, you would be worshiped as a god, but in Greece, you’d be imprisoned in a maze and fed Athenean virgins. Greek myth is littered with these beings: minotaurs, gorgons, sirens, and chimera. Chimera was a lion with the head of a goat protruding from its back and a snake for its tail. Undeniably monstrous. But chimeras exist. And I am one of them.
A modern biological chimera is a single being with more than one distinct set of DNA within them. You can have natural chimera: for instance, if you were supposed to be a twin but you lost your wombmate and absorbed some of their physical material or two embryos that fused together early on in the pregnancy. This certainly happened to me, though whether or not I retained or absorbed any material from my twin is unknown. Venus the Two-Face Cat is an example of this. Women during pregnancy are technically temporary chimera. Then you have man-made chimeras, which are made through medical procedures. Organ transplantation is one of these, but even a simple blood transfusion counts as chimera, if only briefly.
So, we’ve established I am already a monster. Transphobes and terfs already think so whilst only making the broadest of assumptions about my biology. Which is their mistake, because by their own definition of (and obsession with) “biological sex” I could be “biologically female.” If, hypothetically speaking, I absorbed and retained the biological material of a twin that had XX chromosomes, would that not mean I was born chromosomally female? My transplanted liver was that of a “chromosomally female” woman — would that be enough for Joanne Rowling? No? Then what if I kept going?
A famous paradox goes as follows: The Greek hero Theseus after defeating the minotaur and a hundred other atrocious acts was glorified by the Athenian people. They swore they would keep his ship in prime condition in case he ever needed it again. Over time, planks rotted, nails rusted, and rope frayed. And so, piece-by-piece, components of the ship were replaced until finally not a single fragment of the original was still present. Is this ship still that of Theseus? And, if not, at what point did it stop being the hero’s ship?
Well, what if the Athenian people left maintenance of his ship up to the hero himself? Over time, replacing so many broken pieces, Theseus would get a splinter, or a cut, or a rusty nail in his foot. Ancient Greek medicine being what it was, the various mythological beings offered him replacements. Perseus wasn’t using Medusa’s body when he beheaded her, so let his colleague have it. A pair of Aphrodite’s arms were strangely lying around discarded somewhere, so those were attached. And over time, every piece of Theseus’ body was replaced, but with female components. At what point does THEseus become THERseus?
How many organs do I have to replace before I can be classified as “biologically female”?
You might scoff at the idea, but the fact is that your bodies’ cells are all replaced over time, some more frequently than others, so theoretically you are no longer physically the same person you were born as if you die of old age.“But those cells are still you!” you may retort. But are they? Where did the building blocks of those cells come from? The fats, acids, sugars, proteins, vitamins, and minerals all came from external sources, primarily food. As the saying goes, you are what you eat. Sure, I might be splitting hairs, or atoms, with biological essentialism. We do not live in a society where you can have as many organ transplants as you like, not even taking into account factors of supply, need, or consent. And some components you can’t even replace. But medical technology and society moves forward with leaps and bounds.
Let’s forget the distasteful thought of organ transplantation to satisfy the ever-changing whims of bigots and hatemongers. What about organ transplantation for gender affirmation? Late last year, in my very own country, a baby was born to a woman that had been the recipient of a transplanted uterus. Her mother’s uterus in fact, so baby and parent had technically been baked in the same oven. Doctors who specialize in gender affirming care and surgeries are already looking into the theoretics of applying this research into trans subjects. This might sound monstrous to you. It certainly would to all of those gender essentialists who believe your biology is your destiny. But with that kind of thinking, I wouldn’t be alive and writing this. Personally, I long for the day where I can find a personal ad that states “T4T: Transmasc looking for transfem to spend a weekend of heavy petting before sparking some zydrate and swapping sexual organs.”
I understand this might be shocking for a lot of people. Horrifying really. That’s how humanity has always viewed the new. For every medical school dropout bringing life to a cobbled-together collection of corpse parts, there is an angry mob with torches and pitchforks screaming about “Playing God” or what have you. Which brings me to my favorite David Cronenberg film, and the one that’s most personal to me.
Crimes of the Future imagines a world without pain and without transmissible infection. Vivisection and body modification have become performance art; surgery and shared scarification have become sex; and human evolution has become accelerated, with individuals frequently and spontaneously growing strange new organs. Saul Tenser is one of these individuals and requires the support of specially designed furniture to allow him to eat and sleep without pain. Every organ he “creates,” he surgically removes with the help of his performance partner Caprice in front of an adoring audience. These organs are then cataloged and registered with the government who have outlawed any unauthorized erm… organ possession. Saul, who also works undercover for the “New Vice” squad, the police department that oversees the organ industry, begins making connections with a number of subversives: a surgeon who runs an “Inner Beauty” pageant for people who can grow the most interesting or beautiful new organ, and a group of terrorists that have surgically altered their digestive systems so they can only eat industrial waste.
The organizers of the pageant express dismay at Saul’s insistence to remove any organs he grows, arguing he cannot be sure these organs are dangerous, that they may in fact be a new step on the evolutionary ladder that he should be proud of and not deny. The terrorist cell’s leader echoes this sentiment and, in fact, has the frozen remains of his dead child, the first to be born with a “natural” digestive system that allowed him to consume inorganic matter like plastic, and offers Saul the chance to use it in a performance. To show humanity that they are on the cusp of the next evolutionary wave. The child’s murderer was his own mother who had seen her son not as a human being but as some unnatural creature. On the night of the performance, Saul discovers the government has replaced the dead boy’s organs in an attempt to discredit the cell. Saul turns in his resignation in disgust, his supervisor remarking it was weird how the digestive system looked so “natural.” The final shot of the film is of Saul in the chair designed to help him eat without pain, pain that has audibly and visibly been with him the entire film. The chair gyrates and writhes, trying desperately to relieve its master’s discomfort. Caprice offers Saul one of the industrial waste bars produced by the terrorist cell, designed to be the only thing these “new” humans can easily and happily digest. Saul eats, chews, and swallows. The chair stops moving, its function no longer required. A tear rolls down the man’s face, finally free of pain.
I long for an end to pain. My ex once thought me to be a masochist for how long and well I could endure pain, both physical and emotional, often inflicted by her. But just because you are good at something does not mean you necessarily enjoy it. Perhaps the thought that it was a kink reduced some of the guilt she had. Perhaps I am overthinking it. But I am a survivor. Like a cockroach. You have to be if you live with chronic illness, organ transplantation, or gender nonconformity. But just because a cockroach can survive a nuclear holocaust, it doesn’t mean they aren’t living in a radioactive wasteland for the rest of their lives.
Don’t get me wrong, if I hadn’t had my transplant and hadn’t transitioned, I would have died a long time ago. These were necessary, life-saving actions. The pain comes from everything else involved. The chronic migraines and fatigue that leaves me housebound, unable to work. The institutionalization and medicalisation of the transition process, requiring me to still toe the gender binary line in order for the government to consider me “valid.” “Hyper-femininity is the best all-round cover an agent ever had. Words to live by!” Immunocompromisation in the wake of a global pandemic and chronic fatigue leaving me completely isolated and alone, even from my most well meaning friends. Until recently, I hadn’t seen anyone who wasn’t a family member, a retail worker, or a medical professional for three entire months.
Because that’s the crux of it: Like the extras in a Cronenberg film, even the most well meaning or supportive individual cannot truly understand the horror and the beauty of your experience. But I live in hope that someday humanity stops fearing the new, the different, the strange, and, like Saul Tenser in Crimes of the Future, we can learn to accept the possibility lying in wait in our own bodies and beyond. To shed the definitions and classifications that had previously bound us to our biological shells. Only then can we truly be free from pain. Long live the new flesh!
Amazing writing