Drastic Treatment Darren Douglas Floyd darrendouglasfloyd.com 2020
Dedication Endebted to Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ For the Etruscans and Roland Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text. Thanks to Johanna Fateman, who liberated the zine and made it an artform. All stan, our queen, Nathalie Wynn.
Aghast A ghost August 2016. I had just moved to Memphis to begin the new job. Another two-year gig at a small liberal arts college to implement a digital arts curriculum. I was in between two desperate traumas of contemporary masculinity -- a prostate cancer diagnosis and the upcoming 2016 presidential election. My idea of the future changed immediately. When the cancer bomb drops and death feels imminent, it’s the future that ghosts. The present and past still feel real, but it becomes clear that you are at the end of a trajectory, not in the middle. I was aghast that we would elect such an overt racist, misogynist liar. During the campaign I had been worried that he would pretend, hide or trick us. His daily horror show convinced me that he could not win. I was wrong. His election revealed a damning truth about America.
Androgen Deprivation Therapy (ADT) Also known as chemical castration, ADT is a common, if rather drastic treatment for prostate cancer. In combination with surgery, radiation and/or chemotherapy, ADT can be lifesaving. The side effects, as listed on the American Cancer Society website, are severe. • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Reduced or absent libido Erectile dysfunction Atrophy of testicles and penis Hot flashes Gynecomastia Decreased mental sharpness Loss of muscle mass Weight gain Fatigue Depression Increased cholesterol levels Osteoporosis Anemia
I started ADT in December 2016 and as of this writing, I have been on the treatment continuously for three years. For me it has been life-altering. A pause in masculinity. The cessation of cancer growth, and also somehow manhood. A lifesaving, life changing treatment. A great freedom, unlooked for, much appreciated.
Bannon “The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo 10,000 years of recorded history.” - Steve Bannon Yes. Ten-thousand years yes. Or until such a law might be carved into a seven foot tall stone: If the “finger is pointed” at a woman’s husband about another woman, but he is not caught sleeping with the other woman, he shall jump into the river for his wife’s sake. [adapted from the Code of Hammurabi] I recognize that these kinds of inversions are mostly symbolic, deceptive tropes. We need a new man. A break in masculinity. The drastic treatment, ADT for the masses. Andropause.
Binary Two sides. Two states. On and off. 1 and 0. Not so much an essential truth as a way of encoding information. “[V]ery fine people, on both sides.” Two parties, two genders, two sexes. Obviously not always true, just a way of organizing things. So utterly false, at times, that the binary fails to organize, fails to encode. 2018. Telling mom about the ADT and openly wondering if it is a trans experience. “Honey, you’re not trans.” “How would you know?” [T]here are at least two components to successful identity transformation: (1) how a person self-identifies, and (2) whether a given society is willing to recognize an individual’s felt sense of identity by granting her membership in the desired group. (Tuvel, 2017) This also applies to white supremacists.
Blasey
Indelible in the hippocampus is . . .
Dr. Blasey Ford’s devastating testimony was a demonstration of feminist truth, which is to say, simultaneously personal and political; embodied, describing a physical knowledge; gendered, as the body’s presentation of sex and sexuality is embedded in the description; sexually self-aware, able to feel, observe and describe how desire functioned in real time. Proposal: That the qualities of Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony be a checklist for future truths. If it doesn’t have these qualities, it’s not reliable and shouldn’t be trusted: mnemonic, emotional, vivid, fragmentary, vulnerable, aware of its own limitations, imperfect, persistent. We will no longer trust men just because they are men. We will no longer be persuaded by anger, blame or violence. Going forward, the experience of the survivor of desperate trauma will serve as the template for truth. Don’t worry boish, it’s just for the next 10,000 years.
Cancer The diagnosis took me by surprise. Stage 4 prostate cancer. There had already been blood in my semen for months. I took photos of it and showed them to my urologist. He didn’t rush me to emergency surgery. I realized it was serious when the nurses in the office wouldn’t look me in the eye. They held their gazes down. As I walked out of the office and into the burning Phoenix sun, I thought to call my mother. But how could I tell her that her youngest son had cancer? It felt impossible. I called the American Cancer Society. They were great. They walked me through every line of my diagnosis sheet, answered all my questions and stayed on the phone with me until I could pull myself together.
Castrati
Cas·tra·to | /ka-ˈsträ-tō/ Cas·tra·ti | /ka-ˈsträ-tē/ a singer castrated before puberty to preserve the soprano or contralto range of his voice
The singers. Castration is known to have permanent, if unpredictable, effects on the development of the body. Between 1550 and about 1850 in Italy, certain boys with excellent voices were castrated under the auspices of the church, despite religious prohibition of the practice, in hopes of arresting the elongation of the larynx and thereby preserving the childish tone and range of the voice. The castrati were not slaves and are often said to have given consent prior to the surgeries. Martha Feldman’s recent book on the subject describes the history and nuance of the castrati with incredible detail. All of them shared the deformation of having been castrated testicularly before puberty, the hormonal effects of which were erratic across the population and the anatomical consequences thus highly variable. (Feldman, 2016)
D.T.s Damning Truth Deceptive Trope Deep Throat Defunct Teleology Deleted Treaty Delicious Treats Delirium Tremens Derogatory Term Desperate Trauma Despicable Tantrum Devastating Testimony Dickish Troll Disturbing Trend Doddering Turd Dopey Traitor Drastic Treatment Dull Timesink These years have been a living nightmare. Permission for bigotry to re-emerge, to be our worst selves. Let’s hope it’s the dying gasps of an old masculinity, desperate and flailing.
Eunuch
eu·nuch | /ˈyü-nək, -nik/ 1: a castrated man placed in charge of a harem or employed as a chamberlain in a palace 2: a man or boy deprived of the testes or external genitals 3: one that lacks virility or power Old English, via Latin eunuchus from Greek eunoukhos, literally ‘bedroom guard’, from eunē ‘bed’ + a second element related to ekhein ‘to hold’.
Eunuch seems to be the accepted umbrella term for all castrates, even though eunuch history is deep and varied. Eunuchs existed in China and India, Greece and Rome, the Middle East and Africa, eastern and western Europe. Slavery and forced genital amputations were common, but not ubiquitous. The term generally includes the castrati, the Skoptsy, and probably also applies to men like me, the chemically castrated, but also to M2E trans people and maybe to many older men whose natural testosterone levels have dropped sufficiently to cause andropause. It’s curious that men from such various cultures over a broad span of time are unified under a single term. The one purported commonality at the center of the myths, the fascination and the fantasy is what gets cut off.
Furniture The society described in Rieko Yoshihara’s Japanese novel (and later anime series) Ai no Kusabi has within its caste system “Furniture”, or eunuchs who act as servants to the highest social class. Towards a eunuch aesthetic, a collection of symbols and metaphors that will serve as themes for a future masculine/liminal art: • • • • • • • • •
Furniture and home decor, possibly baroque or heavily patterned; A slight smell of piss, as from a leaking urethra; Tools and implements for the surgical procedures and their shapes; A rounded human silhouette, gynecomastia, a boyish face; Liminality, neutrality and non binary systems of organization; The greater and lesser seals, and other scars related to castration; The letters A, E and T, or their absence; sounds Sp, Ck, Sc; Special attention given to transitions; cuts, fades, wipes, juxtapositions; Highlighting difference, change, ambitions for metamorphoses.
Critical Eunuch Studies A subfield of gender studies, concerned with understanding masculinities through the lens of the eunuch: a non binary critical identity from which gender, sexuality, society and politics can be viewed and understood uniquely.
Gender If we accept that genders are constructed and performed, they must also be created. How do we invent new genders? According to genderspectrum.org, there are three components to gender: Body - our experience of our own body Identity -the name we use to convey our gender Social - how we present our gender in the world Finding language for my body is hard. I can’t really invent it by myself. I need some kind of community. Why is ContraPoints the one who makes the most sense to me? I want new genders within masculinity that I actually identify with. Both from before ADT and now. There must be a list somewhere of considered, nuanced, masculine gender identities. The lists I’ve found don’t quite fit. I have this body. I can describe it, I am trying. The identity, a work in progress, formulating. The social component to gender, the necessity of group acceptance -- is that even possible? I’m still hiding out in this fat man’s body hoping the fellows don’t notice how little I admire their habit of sexualizing every woman we encounter. This passing felt safer when I was a simple heterofeminist. I felt stronger then and more confident. Now that my gender is slipping, I feel far more vulnerable. Do they know? Can they tell?
Hermaphroditus Symbolically, the “both/and” body that undermines “either/or” binaries. Hermaphroditus, a mythical Greek figure, is the two-sexed child of Hermes and Aphrodite, a symbol of androgyny, portrayed in Greco-Roman art as a female figure with male genitals. I identify with the myth or its inversion. My body is a “both/and” body. I have a male figure with an atrophied lady penis and gynecomastia breasts. These features are side effects of the prostate cancer treatment, ADT. I didn’t choose to transition. This two-sexed body is not the body I wanted, but it’s the body I have, and possibly, the body I need and have always needed.
Hormonal When the androgens left my body, the first thing I understood was a deep sense of betrayal. It was underneath everything and had always existed, yet beyond my perception. I also lost a significant amount of concern for what women thought of me. Without realizing it, every day for most of my life, I was trying to impress the women around me. Subtly signaling that I was a viable candidate. It strikes me as deeply ironic that men characterize women as “hormonal” and “hysterical” for spending a few days a month awash in reproductive hormones. Now that I stand outside of it, in this dry place of no desire, it’s obvious that men are awash in testosterone every single day. Does this explain the permutations of male sexuality? Our brains are saturated. We are sopping fruit cakes of masculine imperative.
Impeach “...the motherfucker!” An obvious and necessary action. If nothing else, it will mark in US history that we knew what a complete clown this guy was in real time. A signpost on the road to whatever comes next, be it a race war, the reality wars, or just the ongoing descent into ever worsening climate crises. He uses the deceptive tropes of the carnival barker to inflame and incite. His perverse excesses encourage and permit his followers’ vilest instincts. Half of American is lit by gas. His innovation is in undoing a few hundred years of shared, constructed realities. And the trouble is, he’s right. Outside of a few physical measurables, the rest is stories. Persuasive ideas that become the basis for society. Code of Principles and Rule of Law. We made them up. It’s fiction. Artists used to challenge the stability of the known, the conventional and the majority, opening up new realities and perceptions. Now it’s these dickish trolls from the alt right, and what they are undermining is our attempt to construct genuinely egalitarian democracy. Racists out!
Inguinal Hernia According to the Intersex Society of North America, “The total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female” at birth is estimated to be 1%. That’s about 3,250,000 people in the US alone. Many of these babies are given surgical procedures shortly after birth to conform their genitalia to either male or female. These procedures sometimes take place without the knowledge or consent of the parents. [poorly sourced] I had an inguinal hernia operation as an infant. It’s something I grew up knowing about myself. My mom made a big deal out of it. This operation can be used to correct problems related to the descending of the testes. Is this the reason I had the surgery? I have no idea, but it would explain some things. I’m too afraid to ask my mother about it. Would she even know? Ugh. Why am I looking for a medical reason to explain who I am? Is my experience more legitimate if I can trace it to a surgical procedure I endured as an infant? The closer I look for the “truth” of my gendered experience, the more it all appears malleable and unfixed. I pity you because you don’t think that you’re real until a man in a lab coat signs a prescription pad. And I can’t imagine what it must be like to have so little confidence in your own reality. --Baltimore Maryland
Justice Whatever moral clarity I have in politics hasn’t come to me naturally. Even though my mom says I have been concerned about the unfairness and injustices of the world since I was a child, I’m no lawyer. I could claim that it was the cancer, and that my new purpose was forged in a sea of radiation. But really it is Chris Hayes’ podcast, Why Is This Happening? A year of listening to different thinkers (also via Ezra Klein) has radicalized me on the American promise. [A] genuinely multi-ethnic, multi-racial pluralistic egalitarian democracy has never been brought forth on this Earth, ever. --Chris Hayes The most inspiring political project I have encountered is that of extending the American promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all people. Not just the whites, the men, the straights, the rich, the literate, the able, the strong, the religious, and the correct. All the people, all the time. Justice --Can you fucking believe it--
Kavanaugh? His furious face is an emblem of masculine guilt. I grew up around this shit. My dad, red faced, teetering between weepy self-absorbed sorrow and selfrighteous fury. It’s what dishonesty looks like. Given Kavanaugh’s relationship to alcohol, I find it plausible that he has little or no memory of the assault. But his performance of aggrieved masculinity was an obvious tell. If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead. --Donald Trump Kavanaugh’s internal calculus has probably indicated that he needs to be a very good boy in his normal life in order to make up for the debauchery of his double life. Likely, he’s praying that he can keep on enjoying his beer without it ruining his career. Yes, we drank beer. My friends and I. Boys and girls. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. Still like beer. We drank beer. --Brett Kavanaugh
Laurel Lynette My mother once told me that after my older brother was born, they were hoping to have a girl. When my mother was pregnant with me, they went as far as coming up with a name for the child they thought she would be. Her name was Laurel Lynette. At first I thought the idea was weird and vaguely disturbing, a female version of me from an alternate life or some other reality. Later I thought of her as another me, a component of who I am. Maybe she was why I was a feminist or liked the color pink. Now I am starting to think that she is actually me. That we are the same. Or that I am becoming her.
M2E The term eunuch is being used contemporarily by a small population of men who seek emasculation via surgeries or even self-mutilation, as well as by men who seek various forms of chemical or physical castration for aesthetic or other purposes. Of course these men, as they express and present themselves to one another online, don’t articulate their desires for ‘eunicity’ as disordered. They express many things common in trans discourse: descriptions of gender dysphoria; transitional effects of hormones; physical impacts on their bodies; changes in sex, sexualities and attractions. There has been some attempt to study these men and their motivations: The physical castrations were largely premeditated, with an average of 18 years from the time that an individual developed interest in being a eunuch to the time of their actual castration. We identified four factors that may promote castration ideations: (i) abuse sustained during childhood, including parental threats of castration; (ii) homosexuality; (iii) exposure to animal castration during youth; and (iv) religious condemnation of sexuality. (Johnson, et al, 2007) This is what Joey Alison Sayers has named The Trans Discourse Minefield -- a sharp contrast in how trans folks are speaking about themselves to each other, versus how the outside worlds of family, society and the medical establishment speak about trans people.
Masculinities What are the variations in masculinity? What kinds of men can we be? Where do eunuchs, castrati and heterofeminists fit? When I was growing up, the choices seemed to be jock, burnout, nerd or punk. They didn’t seem like genders then, more like social groups. But now I’m thinking maybe there were modes of cishet gender performance modeled and available in each of these groups. A 2017 American Counseling Association paper offers some intriguing possibilities for gay masculinities, including Bears, Cubs, Otters, Wolves, Twinks, Twunks and Pups, Jocks, Gym Bunnies, Gym Rats, and Bulls, Chubs and Chasers, Geeks/Gaymers, and Queens/Drag Queens. (J.L. Maki, 2017) Many of these categories have detailed subtypes, such as: Grizzly Bears (White, hairy, heavier men), Cubs (younger hairy men), Polar Bears (older men with greying or white hair), Big Teddy Bears (men who are hairy, yet heavier than Grizzly Bears), Otters (men who are hairy but thin), and other classifications encompassing ethnic variations such as Black Bears (hairy men of color) or Panda Bears (hairy Asian or Pacific Islander men). (Moskowitz et al., 2013 p. 776) These body type descriptions that include variations and detail to account for age, race, weight may be more relatable ways of understanding the nuances and shades of difference between and among masculinities.
Menopause Is menopause a trans experience? What about the hormone treatments for some breast cancer patients? Defeminization is not on the list of menopausal symptoms. Even if ungendering were listed, it would be framed as negative rather than as the rare opportunity it is to finally slip outside the brutal binary system. (Steinke, 2019) If some women experience menopause as a trans experience, do trans women experience menopause? Transwomen who stop or lessen hormone therapy can also experience menopausal-like symptoms. (Steinke, 2019) If there is overlap between trans experience and menopause, could this lead to greater acceptance of trans people? Is it possible to humanize trans experience by connecting it to the broadly known varieties of hormonally driven experience? Could such a connection bring us closer to a multi-gendered, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, pluralistic and egalitarian democracy? I hold this vision of the future: where trans experiences aren’t marginalized, where everyone connects to their inner tran, where hormonal changes are just part of how we slip between and through genders as we age. Trans people are the harbingers of this new reality. Trans discourse is where all these curious, unfamiliar and forbidden ideas are known and discussed.
#metoo Gentlemen, the comeuppance has finally come up. It’s time to look at ourselves. Depending on what disturbing trends you find, go see a priest or an understanding friend. It’s important that they are trustworthy. Tell the truth about yourself. When you get back, let’s talk about how to change our behavior. What I find in myself, when I look for it, is not flattering. I want to be liked, I want to be wanted, I want to be special. I have wanted this from women, specifically. These desires might be natural, and considered normal, but they don’t necessarily serve me or us well. And to inflict unwanted desires on women is unfair to them. At the bottom of it, for me, is pride, selfishness and fear. It’s on me to handle these aspects of my character in ways that diminish or eliminate their effects on other people. Pick a principle you admire. Starting with honesty is probably a good idea, because the ability to be honest with one’s self and with others is fundamental. Try applying the principle in your daily life to every decision you make and every action you take. Don’t get crazy when you fuck up. Just try to be a little more honest every day. My dudes, please join me. The last 10,000 or so years have revealed the damning truth about how we have been collectively wielding power in ways that harm us all. Let’s improve.
Mother Hi Mom. I’m not sure you’ll be comfortable reading this. I know it’s been awkward at times, your relationship to my artwork. Ever since you called me a cad when I was 19, I understood that you had judgments about my personal conduct that were unflattering to me. I started lying to you about my relationship status sometime after that, realizing that you wouldn’t be the confidante I was hoping you could be. Later I tried to be a better son again, and just left out any adult content from our conversations. I remember you laughed when I showed you the Video Letter to Kimi Takesue, but were not able to discuss it with me. I don’t think you ever watched How to Live, Agent Flizzo, Dreams of Babies, the Travel Movies, or Destroyer of Dreams. I get why the CancerGram is hard to look at for you. Who wants to face the death of their youngest child? Anyway, it’s all there on my vimeo, if you ever want to try to understand me. (The way I want to be understood.)
Neuter The neuter gender. A neuter word. The sexless, asexual and unsexed. Nonfertile, castrate or spay. Epicene. ep·i·cene | /ˈepəˌsēn/ having characteristics of both sexes or no characteristics of either sex; of indeterminate sex. Both or neither. In life, I’m both, coming from masculinity and developing secondary feminine traits. A mythical Hermaphroditus, except that I’m no beauty. “Epicenity is the lack of gender distinction, often specifically the loss of masculinity. It includes androgyny – having both masculine and feminine characteristics.” Androgyny carries the implication of ambiguity. It seems to be all these slender enbies. I’m not that. Serenity, obscenity, epicenity: In the vision, I’m neither. Not alive, not dead. But I am divided. My body is back on earth, which seems like a ball of mud spinning and rotating around a bigger ball of fire. I’m everywhere and nowhere, my sense of myself is waning, but I understand that I am returning to a vast energistic flux. I will no longer be me. The comfort that washes over me is warm and real, and shakes me out of it.
NB I don’t know what I am anymore. Queer, Trans or Non-Binary; Eunuch, Castrate or Spado. I was assigned male at birth (or shortly afterward). I never felt like I was one of the other boys, but I wasn’t attracted to them either. I have never wanted to have a female body. I’ve never dressed in drag. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t a feminist. I was a man. But I never felt like a MAN. I couldn’t ever quite do it. I liked my penis. I held it a lot. The possibility of making children felt important. I moaned aloud and wept profusely when that possibility was gone. I slid off the cis male end of the gender sphere when I started receiving androgen deprivation therapy as treatment for stage 4 prostate cancer. Now I occupy some queered corner of gendered experience with, possibly, a fair percentage of the roughly 40,000 men who start ADT each year in North America. As I write, I’ve been on ADT for three years and my body has changed as a result. At first I wanted out of this body. It had betrayed me. But now I am coming into it. It’s a new, “both/and” body, liminal, masculine and feminine, posing a problem for the binary. I no longer hold it.
Obama I trusted Obama. His intelligence, compassion and humility convinced me. I fully believed that whatever the issue, he was well-equipped to look at the ideas, consult with the smartest and most experienced people, and solve the problems the best he could. Because of the way he did things, I took his mistakes, errors or misunderstandings to be bumps on the road of progress. Things he did that didn’t work, like the Healthcare.gov website, I explained away. Policies of his that were compromised, I blamed on the other side. I was sure that Obamacare would have been better if the Republican’s didn’t sabotage it at every turn. It’s scary to admit, but I relate to the doddering turd’s true believers. Their unquestioning faith in him, despite his lies and equivocations, is not that different from my belief in Obama. They find an excuse for every lie, a justification for every horror. They are with him no matter what, just like I was for Obama. Are these positions equivalent, mine and theirs? Is there a difference based on something real and measurable? Is there a way back to a shared constructed reality where we can disagree about solutions to problems we can all see?
Old Man Old Man is dead. He passed away comfortably this morning at 11am. Old Man’s chronic kidney disease worsened rapidly in the new year, resulting in an inability to eat, walk or stand. It was time to let him go. Old Man was a wanderer. He liked to roam. He hated the rain. We traveled much of the country together, stopping every day for a good long walk, preferably off leash, and explored many places together. He was a calm and willing traveling companion. Old Man was my cancer dog. I adopted him in June, 2017 after I had apparently survived radiation, because my friends were concerned about my will to live. He may have saved my life. He was my pal through the darkest moments of my life. When he almost died in 2018, I wept over him, fed him plain cooked chicken and asked him to stay with me longer. This time, I told him it was okay to go. Old Man was not a people dog. He liked us okay, but he didn’t love us. He chased cats and some birds, but not rabbits. He liked to meet horses and seemed perplexed once by a deer. He was never a cuddler. He didn’t want to smell your dirty hand, he wanted to smell your breath. He was most curious about what you had been eating. Because he didn’t hear well, we communicated visually with some hand gestures, a whistle that meant “hey look at me” and a percussive sound that meant “stop.” He wasn’t too obedient, but he was a very good dog. Goodbye Old Man. Life feels a little emptier without you.
Patriarchy During the hearings, after Dr. Blasey Ford had testified, it was as if patriarchy hung on the precipice. Would she be believed? What a simple thing, to topple the long history of privilege. To be believed. The dynamic of the female prosecutor as mouth-piece for the committee of older white men was perhaps evidence that white feminism had been working -the republican dotards felt they couldn’t speak without hurting their own cause. What an interesting admission. In Kavanaugh’s testimony we witnessed a despicable tantrum, an extraordinary performance of masculine rage. Puffed up and overblown, hyperbolic, choleric, colicky. It seemed like an over-reaction. “Oh my god, Kavanaugh is freaking out, he’s losing it. It’s so Trumpian, is this actually going to work?” Part of the way through the questioning, it must have occurred to Lindsay Graham, through patriarchy’s intuition, that the entire history of male authority was in the balance. That something was changing. Graham went in like Kavanaugh, seizing control of the narrative and bellowing like a man who can feel patriarchy’s death in his heart. Let these be the last gasps of a decayed and defunct teleology.
Prostate Specific Antigen The PSA test is the basic method of diagnosing prostate cancer. It’s a tricky test because it’s not always an accurate predictor of prostate cancer. PSAs are created in the body naturally, not just in the presence of prostate cancer. PSA is a major protein in semen, where its function is to cleave semenogelins in the seminal coagulum. (Balk, et al, 2003) According to cancer.gov, PSA levels above 4.0 ng/mL have traditionally been considered suspect. More recent studies have shown that some men have prostate cancer with PSAs below 4, and some men have higher PSAs don’t have prostate cancer. Mine were 357, 323, 196, 13.3, .564, .273
Pussy Hat My mother knitted them for my brother and I as part of the resistance. Some of the ladies in her knitting group were passing the pattern along among themselves. I wore mine with pride all that winter in Memphis. My students asked about it. We looked them up online. Later I learned that one of my students had reported me for saying the word “pussy” in the classroom. Hearing it made her feel uncomfortable. “Politics is not a protected trait.”
Queer I don’t know if I am queer. Who gets to be? 1994. Wooster, OH. The only male Women’s Studies major on campus and reveling in the disturbance and confusion it caused. “Is he gay?” “It must be to meet girls.” “Why else would he be studying that?” The voices of suspicion. Was I? By then I knew that my desires were not simple. Was I queer? I was queering. I’m interested in performing gendered disruption, the subtle subversions of making people not quite sure... Straight-Queer masculinities, “. . . outside hetero-normative constructions of masculinity that disrupt, or have the potential to disrupt, traditional images of the hegemonic heterosexual masculine.” (Heasley 2005) 1993. “Some people think I’m gay.” She laughed. “You’re the straightest student in the department.” What did she know about me? She seemed so certain. Champneys said he was a tragic non-initiator. Was I? Queering is a method…. I don’t know if I can queer. Who gets to? ADT queered me. ContraPoints queered me. Maybe the hernia and Laurel Lynette. The Women’s Studies degree. The Mapplethorpes. Queer, cuir, cohere. Queered, qweird, queried. ….to develop generative and ‘diffracting’ ways of knowing. (Ireland, 2019)
Remission Mini Roses. Moire Sins. Rim Noises. The preferred narrative of cancer. “Are you in remission?” “Cancer always comes back.” No one wants to hear about how you’re not in remission. No one can bear to feel the dread that has become a part of your daily life. But then you’re not dead yet and suddenly you need a way of explaining to people how they should think of you. “I’m in remission.” It’s just easier to tell them this. It makes them partially forget that you have cancer. Or it makes the cancer not deadly (to them).
Reparations I don’t know how America is supposed to become a more perfect union if we can’t make an honest appraisal of our grosser handicaps. Slavery is our grossest handicap, our original sin and the damning truth at the heart of our democracy. 400 years of plunder doesn’t go away by pretending it didn’t happen. I talked to my mother about it and I could tell she was scared. It was like asking her to pay an impossibly high debt. When I explained the basics of some proposals for investments designed to close the racial wealth gap, the idea started to make sense to her. It also started to seem both affordable and good. I am committed to talking with other white folks about race. I want to change this country, one cracker at a time.
Revolution When I was a young, white, suburban punk growing up under Reagan and Bush, I couldn’t imagine the future. I had been convinced we would all burn in a nuclear fire. Seriously. In 1986, a baseball player signed a contract that lasted through 1993. I remember reading it in the paper and being astounded that people thought we would still be alive in 1993. It slowly dawned on me that other people didn’t think World War 3 was really going to happen, at least not on American soil. As a GenXer, I regarded revolution as a boomer dream from the 60s. They acted like they invented marching and sit-ins, and that all protest should look like it did back then. I didn’t want the job of replicating their failed revolution. When I consider the long history of injustices perpetrated by the American government upon its people, through its ongoing refusal to guarantee its first principles to all people, I conclude that revolution is necessary. How else will we achieve the eradication of our bigotries? I have been thinking that the next war would be the American Race War, in which we finally defeat the white supremacists. But then I read Neal Stephenson’s new book, which convinced me that we are too lazy and privileged for all that fighting. Instead we will fight the Reality Wars, which have already begun.
Sexuality There was a time in my life when I thought everything was sex, or about sex. Desire was so pervasive that I couldn’t see outside of it. It’s what everyone wants to be doing, it’s the big economy, right? (A. Brewer, 1999) With this new body and no libido, I feel outside of the thing that motivated me. Listening to other men talk about sex is like sandpaper on the brain. What happens to identity in the absence of desire? “Desire is significant to these identities tho, no?” Yes. Both heteronormative and queer masculinities have, built in, the fundamental concept of desire: The orientation. I have been dis-oriented. I want for no body. I observe beauty, but I’m not pulled. No one approaches me. I have received a reprieve or a bit of grace. Individuals who identify with gray asexuality are referred to as being gray-A, a grace or a gray ace, and make up what is referred to as the ‘ace umbrella.’ (K. McGowan, 2015)
Skoptsy
Skop·tsy | /skäpt¦sē/ Members of an ascetic religious sect of dissenters from the Russian Orthodox Church dating probably from the 18th century and stressing sexual abstinence.
The Skoptsy included both men and women. Their religious belief considered the sexual organs and genitals to be sinful, and for their physical removal to be necessary for purification from sin. In the case of men, castration took two forms. The lesser operation, called the “minor seal” — also, first seal, first whitening, or first purification — entailed removing the testicles. Either simultaneously, or, more commonly, in a separate operation, the penis itself could also be amputated; this was called the second, major, or “royal” seal — also, second purification or whitening. (Engelstein, 1997) The Skoptsy may be distinct among eunuchs for choosing their castrations as ritualized symbols of spiritual purification, but they are not alone in wanting to be free of the urges, compulsions and desires of their bodies. Some M2E trans people express similar concerns, as do some convicted sexual predators. Interventions are mostly designed to increase voluntary control over sexual arousal, reduce sex drive, or teach self-management and relapse prevention skills to individuals who are motivated to avoid acting upon their sexual impulses and thus contribute to the prevention of recidivism. (L. Gooren, 2011)
Spado
spa·do | /spā(ˌ)dō/ plural spadones | /spāˈdō(ˌ)nēz , spəˈd-/ 1: a castrated man or lower animal 2: an impotent person
The population of men I belong to, and seek to study, are chemically or medically castrated. I would like to propose the term spado for such men, who might be considered as a subset of eunuchs. Critical Spado Studies A subfield of gender studies, concerned with understanding masculinities through the lens of the spado: a liminal masculine critical identity from which gender, sexuality, society and politics can be viewed and understood uniquely. As a near synonym to eunuch or castrato, but without the specific cultural histories, spado seems like an appropriate term for the identity I hope to define. This masculine identity category, as I imagine it, should be open to any who wishes to claim it and might include men like myself, cancer patients who take ADT as part of their treatment. It might include trans men and trans women, and any other people who experience liminal masculinity. Who are these men, the spadones, and what are they experiencing in gender and sexuality as they undergo hormonal changes? Are they like me, who abandoned manliness and drifted gracefully into the non-binary? Or are they like my Immerman Angel, who went to every length to keep his erections, who clung to his masculinity, his sexuality, his roles as husband and father?
T The hardest drug I ever took was testosterone. I was hammered on it every day from age 8 to 43. What did it do to me? I don’t really know. I only know what slipped away when the T was gone. The impact of ADT was physically brutal. As the androgen blockers start to work, your body compensates by making more. This results in a short term extreme hormonal imbalance that expressed itself in my case as migraine headaches, profuse weeping, muscle cramps, extremely dry sinuses, sore nipples, skin fissures on my fingertips, painfully dry elbows and profound sadness. I didn’t possess the mental fortitude to withstand this for any length of time. It took about a year of ADT to start to consider it a trans experience. As the Lupron took over, my body started to change, mostly gynecomastia and feminine fat distribution. I recognized what was happening and could feel myself queering. I started thinking about Laurel Lynette and seeking out queer and trans voices to help find language for this experience. I could relate specifically with trans women who were talking openly about how changing their hormones was changing their bodies and their minds. I was only going half way, blocking androgens as a cancer treatment but not taking any estrogens to intentionally become more feminine. I don’t think of myself as dysphoric. I never felt entirely comfortable as a man, but I was one. Looking back at my notes from that time, it’s clear that these changes, while difficult, made sense and felt like an answer to an unasked question. In some way, I am coming into the self that I have always been.
Troubling Body I have a troubling body. I don’t know about you, but maybe you have one too. I wasn’t always this way. I ended up here accidentally. I’d like to invite all troubling bodies into this discussion. Any trouble, any body. You know, that thing about you that is concerning. Maybe it’s a secret or maybe it’s obvious. It sets you apart, possibly just in your mind, but maybe in real space too. A troubling body challenges norms and assumptions. These challenges can be explicit and implicit, understood and mysterious, perverse and subversive.
Urethra They found the tumor in my urethra. Specifically, the section that threads through the prostate. The tumor had grown from the wall of the tube, within the prostate itself. No wonder I was having a hard time eliminating. Luckily, they were able to remove it during the biopsy. PROSTATE CARCINOMA SYNOPSIS - TURP Specimen C HISTOPATHOLOGIC TYPE: Adenocarcinoma GRADE: Gleason patterns 4 + 4, score = 8/10 APPROXIMATE TUMOR VOLUME (% of tissue): Tumor compromises approximately 90% of the sample. The largest individual tumor focus measures 1 cm in size.
Vegan I am a cancer vegan. A reluctant vegan. An imperfect vegan prone to meatlapses. Vegan because there is some research that suggests being vegan lowers the chance for cancer to return. I’m not a political vegan or a moral vegan. I’m relieved that veganism is environmentally friendly, but I wasn’t a vegan before I got cancer. Strangely, I don’t even think it’s important that I survive cancer. I believe it will come back and kill me, eventually. Nevertheless, I’m vegan, cancer vegan. The trick to veganism, for me, was to eliminate the unnecessary animal products. Many many recipes work just fine without them. I started by replacing common ingredients in my kitchen with vegan alternatives. Cooking vegan at home turns out to be pretty simple. For awhile I worked hard at making a palatable vegan pizza. I gave up. Letting go of Cheetos was hard until I found Hippeas. As far as I know, there are no good vegan gummy bears. The ones I tried are either too hard or weirdly damp. Vegan baking can be very satisfying. The Vegan Zucchini Bread recipe from mydarlingvegan.com is pretty great. The instructions as listed on their site worked great for me. My notes: The dangers are in having too moist a batter or in under cooking. Remember to squeeze out any liquid from the shredded zucchini and make sure your loaf well cooked before you turn off your oven.
Wypipo White people cannot be trusted. The deleted treaty won every category of white voter in 2016. Every category. The problem is us and fixing it means changing ourselves. This will be a lot of work and difficult conversations. I’m not talking about screaming at people at marches. I’m thinking about confronting the casual racism in ourselves and among our own families and friends. It’s exhausting. It can ruin dinner and upset your parents. It’s the least we can do. A small sacrifice of our energy and comfort to right a horrible and ongoing wrong. Racism continues to exist because we accept and perpetuate it. The way this happens personally is for us to define ‘what is a racist idea’. And then when we express those ideas, for us to acknowledge that the idea is a racist idea. I’m not going to say it anymore. I’m going to think differently. I’m going to strive to be antiracist. (I. X. Kendi, excerpted from 2019 interview) This is a prescription for how to change ourselves. Identify the things we think, say and do that are racist. Admit they are racist. Commit to thinking and acting differently. Decide to be actively antiracist. White supremacy can’t continue to exist if we work to end it.
Xenium A feast of delicious treats. The snap shot of tools and mechanisms, the debris of production, through which it moves. Not so much a aesthetic program, as a list of ingredients. Content: personal as political, embodied or literally from the body, gendered, sexually self aware, generative Presentation: daily, social, distributed audience, durational, embedded, networked, shareable Principles: honesty, generosity, selflessness, a measure of humility, capacity for self-reflection and self-correction Process: small pieces, specificity, experimentation, favoring iteration and repetition, embracing variance, accidents, and imperfection Structure: organized, progressive, accumulative, juxtapositional, a linguistic or cultural system, atemporal, anti-temporal or conscientiously negotiating time The fiction of objectivity has been revealed as a shared, constructed reality. We abused it and now it’s broken. If we are going to find a common story, we will need to rebuild from first principles. Pick your principles, tell your stories.
Y Chromosome The Y chromosome is the location of a gene desert, prone to the accumulation of junk DNA. It’s a site of degeneration due to its high mutation rate. It’s also the location of the SRY gene, which is responsible for the initiation of male sex determination in humans. It’s tempting to read into this and imagine a drastic treatment. If we could find the location of the problem, we could cut it out, or cut it off. I find myself repeatedly looking to the body, to genes, hormones, and cells to explain my experience. I still yearn for the validation from the white lab coat. To know the truth. But the closer I look, the more fleeting and ephemeral I become. Reading and listening to the embodied stories of gendered people, queer and trans, NB and Ace, I find much to relate with. I don’t feel entirely found, the fit isn’t perfect, but I’m closer.
Zilch I have nothing. Nothing and no one. The job is gone. The dog is gone. Desire is gone. The PSAs are undetectable, so maybe the cancer is gone. It looks like I will live. They won’t call it remission officially until it has been 5 years cancer free. Let’s just call it rim noises for now. The doddering turd needs to be pushed out. What am I going to do? I would like to live as I am: spado grace. I’d like to make the work I can make. Negotiate my own desperate traumas. Change and be changed. This essay, the one you have been reading twice a day for three weeks, is some of it. About a month ago, not long before I started pushing this essay out into the social world, I was taken off the ADT. If the cancer comes back, they’ll put me back on it. If not, maybe I’ll get stronger and be able to function normally and work again. The plan is to live like I’ll never die. No more waiting.
Drastic Treatment Darren Douglas Floyd darrendouglasfloyd.com 2020 Drastic Treatment was originally published as a social media essay via darrendouglasfloyd.com and pushed to Twitter, Instagram and Facebook two posts per day between December 25th, 2019 and January 16, 2020.
Thanks Many thanks to all those who read and responded to the posts online in real time. In particular, Wyatt McDonald for his near daily feedback and boundless enthusiasm; Justin Carroll-Allan for the encouragement and endless callbacks to things we first discussed years ago; Mat Rappaport for getting it; and Sasha Waters Freyer for helping me see where to pull it back. The feeling of being read is great. Thank you.
Darren Douglas Floyd was born in Ann Arbor, MI in 1972. He was a weird child and then a self-destructive teenager. He earned his BA in Women’s Studies and an MFA in Film and Media Arts as preparation for becoming a itinerant college professor. Diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer at the age of 43, he somehow hasn’t died. Radiation melted his innards, then Androgen Deprivation Therapy turned his skin pink and white. He is currently convalescing in a desert valley.