Alchemical Hermaphroditic Christ
In this society, you empower yourself through medical, cosmetic, and cos-medical mutilation. (A Response to J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition by a Transsexual with genetic Catholic guilt.)
What are the mechanics of Transsexualism? If I want a new-modern-contemporary body, I have to buy one. What are the ethics of buying a body, of anyone buying a body? You empower yourself through medical, cosmetic, and cos-medical mutilation. In this society, everyone is complicit (you are complicit). We are all guilty (you are guilty) of creating and upholding a standard. The standard (you are the standard) then replaces the self-identifying perfection (you are the perfection) due to the simple truth that all beings want to be loved (you want to be loved). Alchemically speaking, the perfect body is that of the hermaphrodite; the intersection of maleness and femaleness, the eclipse, the sexual convergence, the Transsexual, the car crash, Christ. Ballard said that “In twentieth-century terms the crucifixion, for example, would be re-enacted as a conceptual auto-disaster.” One can easily draw a line between the wounds of Christ, the naked body and the juxtaposed vaginal-wound, the car crash, and the hermaphroditic eclipse. Alchemically speaking, the Transsexual is the car-crash body. The reconstructed (perfected) remains of the injured (the dead). In the twenty-first century, the car-crash has become child’s play. Decadence is no longer anything but reality. If you have reached an ideal, philosophically, as a society, how do you then use it? The car has crashed and the victim is nothing but a martyr. We have finished with the mythos and moved on to the post-folkloric scar that is the constructed and technological body, the convulsed metal which bites and scratches what you call reality, the blood dripping on decadence, the sex-fluid dripping on and on from the genitals and on to the bed, the skin, the machine you call friend, lover. Except this is only true in the mind of the Transsexual, who inherently has the perfect body, the perfect soul. I cannot speak to that which I do not know. Everyone else is merely waiting to get hit by a semi-truck filled with trash.
Can’t help but be in awe of the wonderful trans(ha!)historical connections you make here. I remember my first time “watching,” or should I say “viewing,” Crash (which really speaks to the voyeurism of the whole ordeal- I didn’t mean to see it I swear!). My friend who likes to provoke people downloaded it illegally and watched it next to me like it was an episode of Gilmore Girls. He never said “let’s watch Crash,” but I suppose that’s the essence of it. Both Crash, the hermaphrodite, and the trans body/experience come with no “warning”– and they need no warning. They are better without “warning.” This may be controversial.. but they are better as radical entities, as they are not and were never “created” nor espoused by and for the “normal”/conformist/cis-het audience. I love to see religion beautifully and juicily warped and taken away from that audience as well.
Also, the bodily themes of this post remind me a lot of this article I read a while ago from the Getty Center: https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/outcasts/downloads/betancourt_transgender_lives.pdf?fbclid=PAAaYNddorOcyjPEQl7rhUfHp2AEaR7zGJlbnyVHOpLgwcuhov3u7qf8CzCmM. I think you’d like it :D
Love these words! Haven't heard of J.G. Ballard before, but my interest's piqued! I'm a biblical and theological scholar by discipline, and let me tell you, if Christ was anything, they were a Transsexual Car Crashed Hermaphrodite -- or, well, at the very least a gay Marxist with a rebellious note to them (so much for that orthocath standard), even if metaphorically! ;)
You should look up Bassam Al-Sabah's exhibition 'IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS', it's a bit like a car crash hermaphroditic perfection you're describing. Also
'We have finished with the mythos and moved on to the post-folkloric scar that is the constructed and technological body, the convulsed metal which bites and scratches what you call reality, the blood dripping on decadence, the sex-fluid dripping on and on from the genitals and on to the bed, the skin, the machine you call friend, lover. '
this description reminds me of Titane so much I love it.