Book Review: Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability by Jack Halberstam

Reviewed by Rhonda Lancaster

Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability
by Jack Halberstam
University of California Press, January 2018.
$18.95; 184 pp.
ISBN: 9780520292697

Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability by Jack Halberstam lives up to the first part of its subtitle. At a slim 138 pages of content, it gives a quick overview of a very complex issue. Calling it “quirky” might be debatable though. Halberstam has written a straightforward thesis about “gender variance,” but the use of pop culture to frame the argument is an unusual step for an academic text. Overall, the book offers a unique voice in the discourse. Halberstam addresses two specific aspects of trans* theories: nomenclature as both liberating and limiting and the physical representation of bodies.

As Halberstam explains in the first chapter, he chose trans* with the asterisk to “open the term up to unfolding categories of being organized around but not confined to forms of gender variance.” He continues explaining that the asterisk “modifies the meaning of transitivity by refusing to situate transition in relation to a destination, a final form, a specific shape, or an established configuration of desire and identity.” The use of the asterisk is not unique to Jack, but using it adds to the philosophy he hopes his audience will accept: that our world needs more options for gender than the current accepted labels.

While Halberstam acknowledges his own experience with top surgery and his feelings of not fitting the body to which he was born, this is not a memoir. He only briefly mentions his own experience near the beginning, when acknowledging that Trans* may address the more masculine perspective because of his experience, and during the chapter on trans* feminism. It is vital that this personal experience is addressed when discussing feminism since there is still a strain between some feminists who view transsexuals as “interlopers into spaces that women had fought hard to protect from men” and feminists who see no such distinction. Jack encourages society to acknowledge sexism, misogyny, and transphobic “chatter” in its multiple forms by sharing several personal reflections.

The book begins by tracing the historical legacies of categorization and classification as they pertain to the transgender body, moves through the historical and current use of augmentative surgeries, the experience of being trans or parenting a trans* child, and trans* representations in film and on TV, and finally, discusses trans* feminism, a contentious subject. Throughout, Halberstam uses pop culture references from the opening David Bowie epitaph (“You’ve got your mother in a whirl/She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl”) to the closing dissection of what The Lego Movie says “about building new worlds, new architectures, and trans* relations to bodies and selves.” In between, he references Game of Thrones and Finding Nemo. All this is outside the chapter on trans* representations in film, which analyzes the mainstream films, The Crying Game (1992) and Boys Don’t Cry (1999), and lesser known By Hook or By Crook (2001) and indie film The Aggressives (2005). This chapter wouldn’t be complete without a discussion of Transparent as a television series that successfully represents a “specific trans experience…without making it representative of all trans experience” (italics the author’s).

In Chapter 2, “Making Trans* Bodies,” Halberstam makes the argument that transgenderism needs to be placed within a new biopolitical regime where “bodies are not simply the effect of performative or social constructions.” He describes not only the changing terminology of sexual and gender diversity, but the more widespread emphasis on defying the classification, the established norms, and identities. He discusses the step away from psychological or physiological notions to that of pharmaceutical enhancement (Viagra, contraception, hormones, etc.). This leads into a discussion of health concerns not currently addressed, such as male balding for transmen or waning libido for transwomen. He expands writer Maggie Nelson’s comparison of her pregnancy to her partner’s experiences with top surgery. Nelson writes, “bearing each other loose witness,” and Halberstam adds this “captures not just the experience of partnering with a trans* person but the experience of partnering in general.”

Nowhere is Halberstam as concise as in the final chapter, “Conclusions,” wherein he creates an analogy of The Lego Movie with his vision “where the future is not male or female but transgender.” He describes Lego architecture as a constant state of emergence and collapse as children assemble, knock down, and rebuild environments. In the movie, the humanoid characters seek a fabled “piece of resistance” that is “part phallus, part vessel” and literal cap to the superglue weapon the antagonist Lord Business plans to use to prevent the continual transition of the world around him. Halberstam compares Lord Business to the portion of the world who would like to fix gender into the neat division of two categories and the “piece of resistance” to the force of trans* recreation. He finishes by discussing the current dispute about “bathroom bills” and how solving this single issue will not solve the overarching issue of equality and acceptance. He brings together his arguments on nomenclature and body as he argues that we should not simply look for a solution that grants or denies access, but “rethinks the function, the purpose, and the productive force of the architectures we inhabit.” He closes by encouraging us to see the trans* body as all the negatives that history applied as well as a “site for invention, imagination, fabulous projection.”

Trans* was not the “quirky” and thereby “light” read I was expecting, but it was undeniably educational on a complex issue that is currently under debate in our classrooms, courtrooms, and social interactions. Throughout this review, I’ve chosen to use “he” as the personal pronoun for the author because of references by the author about favoring masculinity and the use of the male pronoun in promotional blurbs that accompanied the book; however, in an addendum, Jack refuses to answer the question about pronouns saying, “the back and forth between he and she sort of captures the form that my gender takes nowadays.”  Much as Jack, formerly Judith, Halberstam refuses to choose a gender pronoun, preferring to leave it ambiguous along the lines of transitivity, Trans* does not provide a definitive answer to what should or must be done. It does, however, add to the discourse on transitivity with an important argument toward an expansion of perspective through our use of nomenclature and our view of embodiment.

Rhonda Lancaster is a former journalist and public relations manager who holds an MA in creative writing and literature. She currently teaches dual enrollment English and creative writing in Winchester, Virginia. She’s worked on student publications since her first piece was published in her middle school creative arts publication. A certified Teacher Consultant for the National Writing Project, she teaches young writers’ workshops with Project Write, Inc. She is a member of WV Writers Inc. She lives with her husband, two dogs, and a school of fish in Capon Bridge, West Virginia.