queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2004-01-13 05:38 pm
queerbychoice) wrote2004-01-13 05:38 pm
Why I Am Not a Fan of Jeffrey Eugenides' Novel _Middlesex_
I long ago lost count of how many of you have recommended Jeffrey Eugenides's novels to me: off the top of my head I remember recommendations from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frankepi, rekraft and theobscure, but I'm pretty sure there were even more than that. I also remember one person - I think it was theobscure - mentioning that they had some reservations about the book's tendency to promote biological determinism. This warning caught my attention, yet I never imagined that this issue would turn out to be nearly so all-encompassing a problem as it did.
I finished reading Middlesex today. Yes, it won the Pulitzer Prize. Yes, the sentence structures were pretty. Yes, it meets most of the usual standards for being considered an extremely well-written book. But it has also caused me to strongly dislike its author. I feel that this is a very politically right-wing reactionary novel brilliantly disguised as a left-wing revolutionary one.
The novel is about an intersex person named Calliope Stephanides. Calliope (more often known as "Callie" for short) is born with externally female-appearing sexual organs, and is assumed to be a "normal" female baby, and is raised as such for the next 14 years. But Callie's chromosomes are actually XY, and this is discovered at puberty when Callie develops all male secondary sex characteristics. After narrowly escaping a doctor who wants to chop Callie's sexual organs down to "normal female" size, Callie shortens "her" name to Cal and chooses to live as a male for the rest of "his" life.
The scientific name given in the novel for Cal's condition is 5-Alpha Reductase Pseudohermaphroditism, although this condition usually produces visibly intersex sexual organs that are immediately noticed at birth, rather than ones that could easily be mistaken for those of a "normal" female for Cal's first 14 years of life. The author explains away this failure to notice anything unusual with the fact that Cal's grandparents are longtime personal friends of a particular doctor, who immigrated to the U.S. with them before Callie's parents were born, and so Cal's parents are loyal to this longtime family doctor even though by the time Cal is born, he's 74 years old, with badly deteriorating vision, and just to top it all off, in the middle of checking newborn Cal's sex, he gets distracted by the sight of a beautiful nurse who he marries soon thereafter (yes, at age 74 - or 75, by then).
The scenario of nobody noticing anything unusual about "Callie"'s body is somewhat of a long shot, but certainly not impossible to believe, especially with all these convenient excuses provided. It's just that there's very little data on any real life cases to base this fictional work's characterization upon.
Oh, also, the novel goes much further out of its way than necessary to detail a much larger amount of inbreeding than necessary to "explain" Cal's inheritance of a recessive intersex genetic mutation. Not only are Cal's parents first cousins, but Cal's paternal grandparents are brother and sister, and not only that, but in addition to being brother and sister, they're also third cousins - due to even more intermarriage further back in the family tree. Cal even adds that these intermarriages specified in the book are only a tiny simplified fraction of all the total intermarriages in the family. But really, why is all of this necessary? The recessive genetic mutation is specified as involving only a single gene: people who inherit one copy of the muated gene but a "normal" copy from their other parent end up "normal," but people who inherit two mutated copies, one from each parent, end up intersex (at least if they have XY chromosomes: XX bodies are affected if they get two copies, but the degree to which they are affected is far less noticeable). Because the mutation involves only the two copies of a single gene, one from each parent, all that is required for Cal to inherit the recessive genetic mutation is that Cal's two immediate parents both possess a copy of the same mutation. The odds of this happening are much better if Cal's parents are genetically related somehow, and their being first cousins certainly accomplishes that. But for Cal's paternal grandparents to be brother and sister is quite unnecessary - Cal's father could still inherit his single copy of the genetic mutation just as easily if Cal's grandparents weren't related at all. If anything, all this intermarrying of so many generations prior to Cal's parents just makes it less believable that the family somehow isn't full of dozens of other intersex people in addition to Cal. So I feel that Jeffrey Eugenides's gratuitous inclusion of far more incest than is actually relevant to explaining Cal's intersex genes betrays just how "unnatural" and "undesireable" he really considers intersex people to be - he stigmatizes them as though they can only come to exist in families with levels of inbreeding comparable to historical British royal families!
Anyway, on with the genetic determinism. On page 19, Cal goes out of "his" way to state: "If you were going to devise an experiment to measure the relative influences of nature versus nurture, you couldn't come up with anything better than my life." Then, of course, Jeffrey Eugenides helpfully explains to us exactly what the outcome of this experiment would be, in spite of the fact that it's being conducted purely in fiction. Despite not having the slightest reason to suspect that "she" is anything but female, "Callie" proceeds to be completely exclusively attracted to women "his" whole entire life, even from the age of eight, fully six years before actual puberty. (I've heard enough other people talk about having experienced sexual attraction long before puberty that I've come to accept that it does happen to some people, but it did not happen to me or to a lot of other people I know, and so I consider it to be a relatively rare event. In this case, I think the author resorts to staging a relatively rare event specifically because it's just that important to him to assert that "Callie"'s sexual attraction to females had to have been produced solely by having XY chromosomes, because puberty was still too far off for any of its beginnings to have suggested yet in "Callie"'s mind that "she" might not be a "normal" female). The revelation that Cal has XY chromosomes is supposed to suddenly explain why Cal has always been exclusively attracted to women. Cal remarks on page 166: "Breasts have the same effect on me as on anyone with my testosterone level." Despite the fact that hormone balances have been studied continually for a century in search of "explanations" for queerness and have been so thoroughly discredited as an "explanation" by now that not even the craziest of the "gay gene" seeking scientists like Simon Le Vay and Dean Hamer bother to bring up that notion anymore!
The scenes when "Callie" is 14 and gets taken to a medical specialist who discovers "her" XY chromosomes do earn my approval for thoroughly condemning the tendency of doctors to carve people up without informed consent or giving them much of any time to think it over first. The medical specialist, Dr. Luce, asks "Callie" a variety of questions to determine "her" gender identity, many of which are actually questions about sexual prefence, and he does not tell "Callie" anything about chromosomes or what "her" body will develop like in the future or what all these questions are for. As a result, "Callie" lies and tells Dr. Luce everything "she" thinks "she" is supposed to say, in response to what "she" interprets as accusations of lesbianism: "she" omits all mention of having been attracted to girls, kissed girls, fallen madly in love with and had sex with a girl (all this at only 14!), and instead makes up lies about nonexistent crushes on boys, and throws in a mention of having had "sex" with a boy once (in reality this event would have been better described as rape, and "Callie" did not enjoy it one bit). Dr. Luce responds by informing "Callie" and "her" parents that "she" is a female who just needs a little quick surgery to chop "her" sexual organs down to "normal" female size, and then regular estrogen injections forever after. The only reason Cal escapes from this fate at all is the random coincidence that Dr. Luce's receptionist happened to call him out of the room unexpectedly during an appointment and then Cal, left alone in Dr. Luce's office, happened to wander over to Dr. Luce's desk and stumble onto his case description of "Callie," which Dr. Luce had never intended for "Callie" or "her" parents to read. Through this accidental reading, "Callie" discovers that "she" has XY chromosomes and "she" then reconceptualizes "himself" as Cal, and runs away from home to live on the streets, still 14 years old, just to escape the surgery Dr. Luce had planned.
So don't get me wrong: I'm certainly very glad that Jeffrey Eugenides thoroughly condemned Dr. Luce and other doctors like him. What I object to is that the alternative that Jeffrey Eugenides advocates in this novel is not a radical new world in which hermaphrodites will be free to explore multiple gender ideas and choose their gender presentation freely without being pressured to conform to anyone's preconceived notion about what gender they "ought" to be. Rather, he's merely substituting an absolutely thoroughly mainstream modern definition of gender as being determined by the chromosomes for a 1970s model of gender as being determined by the patient's personal "choice" when under massive pressure from unethical doctors who give hardly any information about what the "choices" actually consist of. This is the exact same absolutely thoroughly mainstream shift in our society's definition of gender that has been taking place in the Texas court system where transsexuals used to be only allowed to marry people of the opposite gender to their current gender but are now only allowed to marry people of the opposite gender to their birth chromosome gender. (And who the hell XXY and XXX chromosome people are allowed to marry in Texas, the Texas court system has not yet gotten around to commenting upon.) This shift in the definition of gender is completely not left-wing revolutionary. Hell, it's right-wing reactionary! A left-wing revolutionary shift in the defintion of gender would base the definition more on personal choice, and would simply eliminate the tendency for doctors to withhold relevant information and unethically pressure people about what to choose, and would eliminate the concept that parents can be allowed to make such choices for their children. But instead of turning the cruelly unfree so-called "choices" that doctors like Dr. Luce pressure people for into real choices with informed consent and no pressure, the "gender is determined by chromosomes" theory that Jeffrey Eugenides and the Texas court system are advocating just gives people even less choice (well, you can't really get any less than what was usually zero choice to begin with, but even less of even an acknowledgment that it should be their choice) about what their gender should be.
I think there's a tendency for people to imagine that any book that even acknowledges the existence of intersex people is somehow automatically left-wing revolutionary, but that is not true at all. To mention any topic does not automatically specify in which direction you're trying to influence your readers' opinions about that topic. In the case of Jeffrey Eugenides's novel Middlesex, I feel that his primary goal in writing the novel was to assert that gender and especially, more than any other aspect of gender, sexual preferences, are inborn. Lacking sufficient data for a real "experiment to measure the relative influences of nature versus nurture," he decided to invent a fictional experiment that he'd be free to write in such a way as to say what he wanted it to say. To do this, he found it convenient to invent an intersex person, but I do not feel that what he says about intersex people is particularly any less hurtful than what doctors like Dr. Luce say. The novel encourages any parents of intersex children who read it to interpret their children's chromosomes as the final say on what their children's gender identity should be and will be. Sure, there are occasional mentions that Cal's adult gender identity isn't completely unaffected by having been raised for 14 years as a girl, but certainly Cal's sexual preference for women is very clearly specified as having been biologically determined by chromosomes, and since most heterosexual parents still prefer to have heterosexual children, that belief alone would tend to bias them quite decidedly toward forcing their child into the gender of their child's chromosomes.
frankepi, rekraft and theobscure, but I'm pretty sure there were even more than that. I also remember one person - I think it was theobscure - mentioning that they had some reservations about the book's tendency to promote biological determinism. This warning caught my attention, yet I never imagined that this issue would turn out to be nearly so all-encompassing a problem as it did.I finished reading Middlesex today. Yes, it won the Pulitzer Prize. Yes, the sentence structures were pretty. Yes, it meets most of the usual standards for being considered an extremely well-written book. But it has also caused me to strongly dislike its author. I feel that this is a very politically right-wing reactionary novel brilliantly disguised as a left-wing revolutionary one.
The novel is about an intersex person named Calliope Stephanides. Calliope (more often known as "Callie" for short) is born with externally female-appearing sexual organs, and is assumed to be a "normal" female baby, and is raised as such for the next 14 years. But Callie's chromosomes are actually XY, and this is discovered at puberty when Callie develops all male secondary sex characteristics. After narrowly escaping a doctor who wants to chop Callie's sexual organs down to "normal female" size, Callie shortens "her" name to Cal and chooses to live as a male for the rest of "his" life.
The scientific name given in the novel for Cal's condition is 5-Alpha Reductase Pseudohermaphroditism, although this condition usually produces visibly intersex sexual organs that are immediately noticed at birth, rather than ones that could easily be mistaken for those of a "normal" female for Cal's first 14 years of life. The author explains away this failure to notice anything unusual with the fact that Cal's grandparents are longtime personal friends of a particular doctor, who immigrated to the U.S. with them before Callie's parents were born, and so Cal's parents are loyal to this longtime family doctor even though by the time Cal is born, he's 74 years old, with badly deteriorating vision, and just to top it all off, in the middle of checking newborn Cal's sex, he gets distracted by the sight of a beautiful nurse who he marries soon thereafter (yes, at age 74 - or 75, by then).
The scenario of nobody noticing anything unusual about "Callie"'s body is somewhat of a long shot, but certainly not impossible to believe, especially with all these convenient excuses provided. It's just that there's very little data on any real life cases to base this fictional work's characterization upon.
Oh, also, the novel goes much further out of its way than necessary to detail a much larger amount of inbreeding than necessary to "explain" Cal's inheritance of a recessive intersex genetic mutation. Not only are Cal's parents first cousins, but Cal's paternal grandparents are brother and sister, and not only that, but in addition to being brother and sister, they're also third cousins - due to even more intermarriage further back in the family tree. Cal even adds that these intermarriages specified in the book are only a tiny simplified fraction of all the total intermarriages in the family. But really, why is all of this necessary? The recessive genetic mutation is specified as involving only a single gene: people who inherit one copy of the muated gene but a "normal" copy from their other parent end up "normal," but people who inherit two mutated copies, one from each parent, end up intersex (at least if they have XY chromosomes: XX bodies are affected if they get two copies, but the degree to which they are affected is far less noticeable). Because the mutation involves only the two copies of a single gene, one from each parent, all that is required for Cal to inherit the recessive genetic mutation is that Cal's two immediate parents both possess a copy of the same mutation. The odds of this happening are much better if Cal's parents are genetically related somehow, and their being first cousins certainly accomplishes that. But for Cal's paternal grandparents to be brother and sister is quite unnecessary - Cal's father could still inherit his single copy of the genetic mutation just as easily if Cal's grandparents weren't related at all. If anything, all this intermarrying of so many generations prior to Cal's parents just makes it less believable that the family somehow isn't full of dozens of other intersex people in addition to Cal. So I feel that Jeffrey Eugenides's gratuitous inclusion of far more incest than is actually relevant to explaining Cal's intersex genes betrays just how "unnatural" and "undesireable" he really considers intersex people to be - he stigmatizes them as though they can only come to exist in families with levels of inbreeding comparable to historical British royal families!
Anyway, on with the genetic determinism. On page 19, Cal goes out of "his" way to state: "If you were going to devise an experiment to measure the relative influences of nature versus nurture, you couldn't come up with anything better than my life." Then, of course, Jeffrey Eugenides helpfully explains to us exactly what the outcome of this experiment would be, in spite of the fact that it's being conducted purely in fiction. Despite not having the slightest reason to suspect that "she" is anything but female, "Callie" proceeds to be completely exclusively attracted to women "his" whole entire life, even from the age of eight, fully six years before actual puberty. (I've heard enough other people talk about having experienced sexual attraction long before puberty that I've come to accept that it does happen to some people, but it did not happen to me or to a lot of other people I know, and so I consider it to be a relatively rare event. In this case, I think the author resorts to staging a relatively rare event specifically because it's just that important to him to assert that "Callie"'s sexual attraction to females had to have been produced solely by having XY chromosomes, because puberty was still too far off for any of its beginnings to have suggested yet in "Callie"'s mind that "she" might not be a "normal" female). The revelation that Cal has XY chromosomes is supposed to suddenly explain why Cal has always been exclusively attracted to women. Cal remarks on page 166: "Breasts have the same effect on me as on anyone with my testosterone level." Despite the fact that hormone balances have been studied continually for a century in search of "explanations" for queerness and have been so thoroughly discredited as an "explanation" by now that not even the craziest of the "gay gene" seeking scientists like Simon Le Vay and Dean Hamer bother to bring up that notion anymore!
The scenes when "Callie" is 14 and gets taken to a medical specialist who discovers "her" XY chromosomes do earn my approval for thoroughly condemning the tendency of doctors to carve people up without informed consent or giving them much of any time to think it over first. The medical specialist, Dr. Luce, asks "Callie" a variety of questions to determine "her" gender identity, many of which are actually questions about sexual prefence, and he does not tell "Callie" anything about chromosomes or what "her" body will develop like in the future or what all these questions are for. As a result, "Callie" lies and tells Dr. Luce everything "she" thinks "she" is supposed to say, in response to what "she" interprets as accusations of lesbianism: "she" omits all mention of having been attracted to girls, kissed girls, fallen madly in love with and had sex with a girl (all this at only 14!), and instead makes up lies about nonexistent crushes on boys, and throws in a mention of having had "sex" with a boy once (in reality this event would have been better described as rape, and "Callie" did not enjoy it one bit). Dr. Luce responds by informing "Callie" and "her" parents that "she" is a female who just needs a little quick surgery to chop "her" sexual organs down to "normal" female size, and then regular estrogen injections forever after. The only reason Cal escapes from this fate at all is the random coincidence that Dr. Luce's receptionist happened to call him out of the room unexpectedly during an appointment and then Cal, left alone in Dr. Luce's office, happened to wander over to Dr. Luce's desk and stumble onto his case description of "Callie," which Dr. Luce had never intended for "Callie" or "her" parents to read. Through this accidental reading, "Callie" discovers that "she" has XY chromosomes and "she" then reconceptualizes "himself" as Cal, and runs away from home to live on the streets, still 14 years old, just to escape the surgery Dr. Luce had planned.
So don't get me wrong: I'm certainly very glad that Jeffrey Eugenides thoroughly condemned Dr. Luce and other doctors like him. What I object to is that the alternative that Jeffrey Eugenides advocates in this novel is not a radical new world in which hermaphrodites will be free to explore multiple gender ideas and choose their gender presentation freely without being pressured to conform to anyone's preconceived notion about what gender they "ought" to be. Rather, he's merely substituting an absolutely thoroughly mainstream modern definition of gender as being determined by the chromosomes for a 1970s model of gender as being determined by the patient's personal "choice" when under massive pressure from unethical doctors who give hardly any information about what the "choices" actually consist of. This is the exact same absolutely thoroughly mainstream shift in our society's definition of gender that has been taking place in the Texas court system where transsexuals used to be only allowed to marry people of the opposite gender to their current gender but are now only allowed to marry people of the opposite gender to their birth chromosome gender. (And who the hell XXY and XXX chromosome people are allowed to marry in Texas, the Texas court system has not yet gotten around to commenting upon.) This shift in the definition of gender is completely not left-wing revolutionary. Hell, it's right-wing reactionary! A left-wing revolutionary shift in the defintion of gender would base the definition more on personal choice, and would simply eliminate the tendency for doctors to withhold relevant information and unethically pressure people about what to choose, and would eliminate the concept that parents can be allowed to make such choices for their children. But instead of turning the cruelly unfree so-called "choices" that doctors like Dr. Luce pressure people for into real choices with informed consent and no pressure, the "gender is determined by chromosomes" theory that Jeffrey Eugenides and the Texas court system are advocating just gives people even less choice (well, you can't really get any less than what was usually zero choice to begin with, but even less of even an acknowledgment that it should be their choice) about what their gender should be.
I think there's a tendency for people to imagine that any book that even acknowledges the existence of intersex people is somehow automatically left-wing revolutionary, but that is not true at all. To mention any topic does not automatically specify in which direction you're trying to influence your readers' opinions about that topic. In the case of Jeffrey Eugenides's novel Middlesex, I feel that his primary goal in writing the novel was to assert that gender and especially, more than any other aspect of gender, sexual preferences, are inborn. Lacking sufficient data for a real "experiment to measure the relative influences of nature versus nurture," he decided to invent a fictional experiment that he'd be free to write in such a way as to say what he wanted it to say. To do this, he found it convenient to invent an intersex person, but I do not feel that what he says about intersex people is particularly any less hurtful than what doctors like Dr. Luce say. The novel encourages any parents of intersex children who read it to interpret their children's chromosomes as the final say on what their children's gender identity should be and will be. Sure, there are occasional mentions that Cal's adult gender identity isn't completely unaffected by having been raised for 14 years as a girl, but certainly Cal's sexual preference for women is very clearly specified as having been biologically determined by chromosomes, and since most heterosexual parents still prefer to have heterosexual children, that belief alone would tend to bias them quite decidedly toward forcing their child into the gender of their child's chromosomes.
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There are, in fact, cases (as I've seen on 20/20 type shows) of intersexed people who were raised as girls until puberty, at which time some hormones "spilled out" and they figured out what they "really were", which is to say, boys. But all it really reveals is what terrible gender stereotypes people have.
This person claimed he always sort of knew he was a boy, because when he was little, he (she) didn't like to wear dresses or play with dolls. Um... how many females do you think are on your friends list who never had much affection for dresses or dolls? I better go get me a penis.
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*raises hand* Yo.
In most cases, I hate dresses. Pantyhose are the spawn of the devil. All jeans, all the time. I don't get off on shopping for clothes, painting my nails, or applying makeup. I wish I were shaped right to be a drag king, because gender-bending gets me all hot and bothered in good ways. I had one Barbie I never played with, and I gave one of my My Little Pony figures a butchy cut.
I identify as female.
And so I say to this author, take your dress-wearin', doll-playin' gender stereotypes and cram it.
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It's beside the point, but to avoid taking credit for someone else's idea, I'm pretty sure wasn't me. But actually, I don't even remember recommending the book to you, so who knows?
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Also: I feel that this is a very politically right-wing reactionary novel brilliantly disguised as a left-wing revolutionary one.
Eugenides seems to do that often.
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bath time!
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As a scientist, I'd point out that the individual story of a single person is not really an "experiment", as it utterly lacks a control group, and besides, it's too small a sample size to really draw any interesting conclusions about the group you're trying to study.
To play devil's advocate, there ARE intersexed people who strongly believe that their gender identity was chromosomally determined, just as there are plenty of intersexed people who strongly believe that their gender identity was not chromosomally determined. I always found it very interesting, for instance, that the child in the John Money case study acted perfectly "girly" until puberty, at which point he rejected his "female" body and identity. It's possible that that was due to the subtle influence of the parents, or the fact that "she" had to take estrogen shots in order to go through puberty, but I actually like to entertain the theory that people have a sense of their bodies at birth that makes it difficult to adjust to a pubescent body. I don't see why not. And of course, sense of body, gender identity, and sexual orientation probably influence each other in various ways.
Also, I'm curious- how did Eugenides explain away "Callie"'s own awareness that "her" genitals were not "normal"? It must have been obvious to her at least, having seen other women, including the one "she" had sex with...
And have you ever read Kate Bornstein's "Hidden: A Gender" play? It's not as artful as Eugenides, but its approach to intersexuality seems a lot more... erm... complex than Eugenides'.
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Yes, that's sort of the point. Cal specifically describes her/his life as being the ultimate perfect "experiment to measure the relative influences of nature versus nurture." It isn't.
"To play devil's advocate, there ARE intersexed people who strongly believe that their gender identity was chromosomally determined, just as there are plenty of intersexed people who strongly believe that their gender identity was not chromosomally determined."
Well, of course. There ARE queer people who think both ways too.
"I actually like to entertain the theory that people have a sense of their bodies at birth that makes it difficult to adjust to a pubescent body."
I wouldn't say "at birth," but certainly in my case by the time I reached puberty I had gotten strongly attached to my childhood body and I was severely disturbed at having it suddenly change without my consent.
"Also, I'm curious- how did Eugenides explain away 'Callie''s own awareness that 'her' genitals were not 'normal'? It must have been obvious to her at least, having seen other women, including the one 'she' had sex with..."
First of all, Cal's family was extremely reticent on the subject of sex. They didn't really explain that it existed, and "Callie" didn't even find out that menstruation existed until after another girl in her class bled through her shorts in public.
Cal's body was sufficiently female-looking that a person who wasn't a doctor would not have been able to discern that there was anything unusual about it up until puberty. At puberty, Cal ended up with a slightly larger clitoris and shorter vagina than most women. However, the boy who raped Cal still didn't notice anything too weird about it - he was too busy being excited about having "scored" to be paying much attention. Cal, however, did start to suspect as a result of the rape that "her" vagina didn't seem to be as big as most women's must be, because it hurt. (Personally, I think Cal would be more likely to attribute this pain and smallness to having a hymen, and I think I would have to use my own fingers to ever arrive at the conclusion that my vagina was actually abnormally short, but Cal supposedly did not need to do this.)
This all took place when Cal was already 14, very shortly before everything was revealed. The rape happened while Cal was really in love with the rapist's sister, and got stuck with the rapist while trying to get closer to the sister. After the rape, Cal succeeds in having sex with the sister, and is aware that the sister's clitoris is smaller than Cal's own, and does continue wondering if "she" doesn't have quite a normal female body. However, Cal has no way to know for sure what the normal range of variation in female bodies is, having only seen one of them other than "her" own, so these are only very very vague suspicions.
"And have you ever read Kate Bornstein's 'Hidden: A Gender' play? It's not as artful as Eugenides, but its approach to intersexuality seems a lot more... erm... complex than Eugenides'."
Yes, I have read it. It's great!
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Gayle I agree with what you say about this book but are you suggesting that gender is a choice and not biologically determined?
-ink
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I would prefer to phrase it as: Gender is socially imposed on us, but we ought to be allowed a choice. The body parts we are born with should not be automatically used to assign us to different social roles and castes. (See the userinfo page of the
when I finished reading this book, I was sad I hadn't thought of it first.
What I like about eugenides, is the fact that he creates a world similar to- and yet totally not The Real World. I think the freak-show scenes make that clear. In this way, Callie & Co. remind me of Lolita and Humbert. They exisit as aesthetic elements in the story, and while the contribute to the FORM, which make the story readible and beautiful, they are like a cartoon image of our world. The fact that you are forced to find the differences between the story and the real world is actully the mechanism by which you are forced to think about the world.
Our world is becoming increasingly biological. This effects the way people think. I can't help thinking the book is slightly ironic about this, but even if it isn't it makes you think. I think the CHOICE callie makes is the choice to live as a man, a switch she made randomly, and the point is not about the flexibility of sexual preference, but rather the flexibility of GENDER. I think the fact that Calli goes directly from being a young woman to being a young man without having thought of being a man before is the most interesting part of the book. I'd like to think anyone could do that, if they wanted to, and I think that's the so called point.
However, it's a story, and a good story, and that's what I look for in a book.
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In a nutshell, I liked Middlesex less for its politics and rather a lot more for how well-crafted it is. And Eugenides should at least get credit for having an intersexed person rather than, say, a transsexual as his protagonist, for the practical reason that there is overt-- and certainly less publicly disputable-- evidence (i.e. the genitals, unnoticed as they may remarkably have gone) for Cal's having been born into an ambiguous situation.
I don't think that Eugenides judges either intersex people or Cal's family's tendencies towards incest all that harshly. On one hand, I would take it that he was being indulgent with all the detail. On the other, I wonder vaguely if, given the Stephanides family's roots, the extensive background serves to shift the emphasis away from biological determination per se, and on to some larger, historically (and culturally) weightier idea of fate as the Greeks know it. The preponderance of incestuous couplings probably serves to amplify this, despite the family's attempts to avoid these.
Having said that, I do find Calliope's spontaneous reconceptualisation into Cal rather unconvincingly abrupt, given all the painstaking detail with which Eugenides has set up the historical background. But that could just be my biases at work. As far as I'm concerned, people are free to choose whether they are a product of nature, nurture, or something quite apart-- that too, to my mind, is ultimately a choice, much as that may tempt people to flame me left, right and centre for. If Cal feels that way, so be it.
P.S.: And
how does it escape Calliope's notice that her bits aren't quite normal?
Re: how does it escape Calliope's notice that her bits aren't quite normal?
Re: how does it escape Calliope's notice that her bits aren't quite normal?
Re: how does it escape Calliope's notice that her bits aren't quite normal?
Re: how does it escape Calliope's notice that her bits aren't quite normal?
Re: how does it escape Calliope's notice that her bits aren't quite normal?
Re: how does it escape Calliope's notice that her bits aren't quite normal?
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Nice post, by the way ;-)
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kudos to your comments
(Anonymous) 2004-03-18 09:43 pm (UTC)(link)Middlesex comments, part one
(Anonymous) 2004-03-19 04:51 pm (UTC)(link)The idea of a novel with an intersexual narrator is rife with possibility. What a hermaphroditic voice might sound like in fiction and what that voice would have to say should be quite a valuable angle on the gender norms people have reified and thus don’t even know to question. But Cal/Callie Stephanides, Middlesex’ narrator, doesn’t do this. Indeed this narrator reinforces a number of reified gender norms. Stephanides’ central struggle is to find out which side of the gender divide he’s on. The narration of the book is Cal’s, though the first fourteen years of Cal’s life were spent as Callie. The narration is always from a male point of view, even the narration of the story of being female.
The narrator tells us straight out, no pun intended, that he has chosen to be a boy. While on the face of things, this might seem to indicate a positive voice for choice/free will, and the narrator claims to be on the side of free will, a closer look at why he chooses to be a boy reveals otherwise. In fact, Cal chooses to be a boy, because he has no choice. When he surreptitiously reads Dr. Luce’s report describing him as male, he leaves a note for his parents saying he is not a girl, but a boy. Luce’s report makes clear sense to Cal, not primarily because he has failed to develop breasts and begin having periods, but because he has always been attracted to females. The possibility of Cal’s being a lesbian is not even considered at this point. The foregone conclusion is that of course Cal is a male, because after all, he’s always been attracted to women. Cal’s maleness is a medical and genetic determination, rather than a matter of preference. In fact, preference is not even presented as an option. The alternatives given seem to be the traditional Johns Hopkins ones of determinism versus socialization, nature versus nurture. Once Cal has the doctor’s information that he is male with female attributes, he never questions his maleness and personal preference is not an issue.
middlesex comments, part two
(Anonymous) 2004-03-19 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)Examples pepper the entire novel. Considering the book’s genetic theme, the portrayal of Lefty waiting for his and Desdemona’s child to be born is particularly ironic. The male role in reproduction, we are told, is a small one. So Lefty and Zizmo, whose wife is pregnant at the same time, go off by themselves and think about money. This is, we are told, what fathers do. Remote fatherhood is not presented as a matter of Lefty’s times, but as a constant. This is one of the most glaring conservative male presuppositions of the book, but there are many others. The narrator assures us of his maleness by showing us how he has always been attracted to females. He also says he reacts to breasts the same way anyone with testosterone does. He wonders if he understood, while still believing himself to be a she, the way boys exploit girls for sex, even to the point perhaps of rape, because he was really a boy himself. Such instances as these not only reinforce conservative male thinking and stereotyping, but likewise reinforce traditional thinking regarding homosexuality and lesbianism. If you are male, you are attracted to women and will do whatever it takes for sexual relations with them.
The novel’s male point of view is problematic for a couple of reasons besides the fact that it is not an intersexual point of view. Rather than a middlesex, there is instead a sexual dichotomy. Rather than having deconstructed gender, male and female are polarized. Because of this, we have a male narrator telling us about the sexuality of a female up until fourteen years of age. The fact that this female character is who the male narrator used to be does not eliminate the male focus. A male telling us about prepubescent and early adolescent female sexuality in erotic detail is automatically suspect and credulity is strained. A male voice tells us about seven year old Callie undressing with and kissing a girlfriend. While this may seem innocent enough, the lesbian (for Callie is thought to be female at this time) romance at age fourteen is a coming of age episode. This male POV showing us close-up erotic details of two fourteen year-old girls, seems not only suspect, while making the reader complicit in voyeurism, but almost pedophiliac. If Eugenides had succeeded in creating an intersexual voice, rather than merely a male one, perhaps the believability in the narrator would make this episode rather different. But as it is, it’s hard not to think of the cliched male fantasy of being a lesbian for a day or the good ole boy joke about being a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. The fact that all of this concerns girls no older than fourteen strains empathy with the male-perspectived storyteller beyond repair.
middlesex comments, part two
(Anonymous) 2004-03-19 04:56 pm (UTC)(link)Examples pepper the entire novel. Considering the book’s genetic theme, the portrayal of Lefty waiting for his and Desdemona’s child to be born is particularly ironic. The male role in reproduction, we are told, is a small one. So Lefty and Zizmo, whose wife is pregnant at the same time, go off by themselves and think about money. This is, we are told, what fathers do. Remote fatherhood is not presented as a matter of Lefty’s times, but as a constant. This is one of the most glaring conservative male presuppositions of the book, but there are many others. The narrator assures us of his maleness by showing us how he has always been attracted to females. He also says he reacts to breasts the same way anyone with testosterone does. He wonders if he understood, while still believing himself to be a she, the way boys exploit girls for sex, even to the point perhaps of rape, because he was really a boy himself. Such instances as these not only reinforce conservative male thinking and stereotyping, but likewise reinforce traditional thinking regarding homosexuality and lesbianism. If you are male, you are attracted to women and will do whatever it takes for sexual relations with them.
The novel’s male point of view is problematic for a couple of reasons besides the fact that it is not an intersexual point of view. Rather than a middlesex, there is instead a sexual dichotomy. Rather than having deconstructed gender, male and female are polarized. Because of this, we have a male narrator telling us about the sexuality of a female up until fourteen years of age. The fact that this female character is who the male narrator used to be does not eliminate the male focus. A male telling us about prepubescent and early adolescent female sexuality in erotic detail is automatically suspect and credulity is strained. A male voice tells us about seven year old Callie undressing with and kissing a girlfriend. While this may seem innocent enough, the lesbian (for Callie is thought to be female at this time) romance at age fourteen is a coming of age episode. This male POV showing us close-up erotic details of two fourteen year-old girls, seems not only suspect, while making the reader complicit in voyeurism, but almost pedophiliac. If Eugenides had succeeded in created an intersexual voice, rather than merely a male one, perhaps the believability in the narrator would make this episode rather different. But as it is, it’s hard not to think of the cliched male fantasy of being a lesbian for a day or the good ole boy joke about being a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. The fact that all of this concerns girls no older than fourteen strains empathy with the male-perspectived storyteller beyond repair.
middlesex comments, part three
(Anonymous) 2004-03-19 04:56 pm (UTC)(link)Re: middlesex comments, part three
Re: middlesex comments, part three
(Anonymous) - 2004-03-22 20:46 (UTC) - Expandno subject
fiction doesn't have to account for itself. it is one long, elaborate, twisting lie--if you don't buy the 'convenient excuses' that allow the seemingly unbelievable to happen, also known as plot points, then it just means that you were unable to willingly suspend your disbelief in order to enter the world of the novel. or that you're used to reading nonfiction. and i'm sorry for that.
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(Anonymous) 2004-04-08 11:24 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
I have a degree in it. I've taken plenty.
"As for Homo by choice and all that, apparently you know everyone, right? There happen to be a great deal of people who experience pre-pubescent same sex attraction."
What, and nobody can make choices before puberty? I already stated quite clearly that there are some people I know who did experience sexual attraction before puberty - I just don't find them to be in the majority.
"However, that is all really beside the point-- this is fiction remember? What is this 1955? Are we going to start trusting Jules Verne or Raymond Bradbury for our scientific info, and quoting Stephen Crane for historical data on the civil war?"
Fiction has effects on the world too - that's why a lot of authors bother writing it. George Orwell's novels don't get quoted as fact, but he did write them to have an effect on real world politics, and the people who read them do indeed sometimes end up having their politics affected by what they read.