“If prophetic vision is perfect it is a kind of prison—dictating, rather than simply foretelling, the future.”
M. Leona Godin, There Plant Eyes
Now, press your phone against your ear, press until it hurts, and listen, again and again, to the voicemail from a stranger, to the voicemail …. and …. call me …. house … storm… And stare, again as you did before, eyes stippled with dust mites long dead, at centuries-old cursive and try to make out the fourth word of the sixth sentence. Dream of understanding it for the first time, then look again and see the word remaining indistinct. Gender is tethered to this inability to give up on enigma; to the deadness of a clear broadcast. Life, from the very moment it begins, is too much for us to consciously, continuously handle. Uncontrolled fragments, by some means submerged, find a life of their own inside our thoughts, words, and actions. They attract our attention, find ways out into the world, become the fixations of others. This process of translation is ongoing, never finished.
In their 2023 book, Gender Without Identity, Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini consider these translational processes as they relate to gender nonconforming children. As practicing psychoanalysts, both authors have met with parents who are anxious about their children becoming queer or trans in the future. These emotionally riled parents seek foreknowledge—maybe advanced warning—from the professionals. But rather than looking to the future, Saketopoulou and Pellegrini turn to the querent’s past and ask: “Why do you want to know?”
Gender Without Identity argues, cogently and empathetically, that gender is an “unfolding and dynamic” experience formed from noisy, oft-unintended signals we receive in early childhood. These signals might not be about ‘gender’ per se, but instead might pertain to family shame, unfulfilled parental dreams, or unacknowledged anger. As overflows from the ‘sexual unconscious’ of our parents and caregivers, these signals are ‘scrambled’ and without a clear meaning for the child. ‘Sexual’ here doesn’t refer directly to ‘adult activities,’ but instead to unconscious fantasies which seek to maintain an inner tension, which seek to keep conflict alive. Unconscious translations of the scrambled signals are later oriented around and against cultural categories which make that inward experience more or less intelligible to others: a supine pliability that is vixen, or a spinal rigidity that is stud.
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