Savannah Harr
Queerness often coincides with performances of gender deemed inappropriate by the status quo. Although this can and does apply to cisgendered queers, it rings particularly true for gender-nonconforming people who may be queer only because of their gender, or because of a combination of their gender identity and sexual orientation. When an individual departs from the conventions of their assigned gender— when a lesbian presents as butch, or a transperson undergoes gender-affirming surgery— they fail to assimilate into culture’s pervasive binary between ‘man’ and ‘woman.’ Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby illustrates that declining to live within the confines of this binary undermines its legitimacy, threatening cisgendered-heterosexuality’s position as the default and organizing human experience. Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure provides a theoretical framework supporting this possibility, suggesting that queers can harness failure to drive change.
Halberstam demonstrates how queerness and failure go hand in hand. He suggests that queerness itself is a form of failure in that queers exist outside of mainstream acceptability. Furthermore, experiencing queerness as a journey of self-discovery and transformation often resembles “what we think of as failure—the failure of love to last, the mortality of all connection, the fleeting nature of desire” (Halberstam 105). Particularly in the context of Western culture, characterized by an obsessive impulse to create permanency through political and personal legacies, queerness inevitably challenges and rejects the collective’s definition of success. Queerness then functions socially as both a practical and ideological failure.
Halberstam attempts to invert the concept of failure, especially as it relates to queer people, arguing that individual failures can create opportunities for cultural shifts. It is within these failures, each a new creation of possibility, that innovation happens. Halberstam writes that “Queer studies offer us one method for imagining, not some fantasy of an elsewhere, but existing alternatives to hegemonic systems” (89). As queers organize their lives in new ways, they redefine boundaries imposed by these “hegemonic systems,” inviting others to do the same. These distinctly queer divergences, for example, the rejection of the nuclear family structure in favor of chosen families and collectivism, provide those with countercultural aspirations examples of lived radicalism.
Gender nonconformity, perhaps, provides the greatest opportunity for queer people to ‘fail forward.’ ‘What It Means to Do Gender Differently: Understanding Identity, Perceptions and Accomplishments in a Gendered World’ by Joshua and Kristen Smith investigates the “complex interactions that occur between self-meanings, perceptions, and behaviors related to gender identities” (62). As a background to their research, Smith and Smith define the scope of gender as it impacts individuals’ lived experiences, explaining that “Gender expectations and views have wide ranging and often intimate interrelations with social interactions and structures” (64). Essentially, gender informs the individual and others’ perceptions of the individual— how one moves through the world around them, navigating their life and relationships, largely depends upon both their own sense and others’ sense of their gender. Because of its cultural significance and near-universality, the institution of gender contains the most opportunity for people, especially queers, to fail in their performance of it.
Queer people understand the way in which they defy, or fail, gender conventions. Of course, certain stereotypes play into this understanding. Even non-queers possess a working knowledge of queer gender failings as they are portrayed in pop culture. Feminine gay men such as Stanford Blatch of Sex and the City often function as the ‘gay best friend’ to heterosexual women, while masculine women, typically only coded as lesbians, such as Glee’s Sue Sylvester, are often portrayed as man-hating and generally antagonistic. Both tropes exploit the gender failings of queer people for comedic or plot-driving effect. The queer community, however, has a much more nuanced understanding of the ways in which they fail to perform gender correctly. Often, this understanding comes from and continues to fuel a preoccupation with their own gender failures. A scene from Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, written by Andrea Lawlor, deals with this self-consciousness. The reader learns that “the minute he had confirmation (besides his own gaydar) that a subject was a homosexual, Paul compulsively searched for the flaws in that person’s gender. Every gay had these flaws, Paul thought, although sometimes the flaw was being too perfect” (Lawlor 58). Here, the novel’s protagonist, Paul, exemplifies this hyper-awareness, and the ways in which queer people self-police their own bodies.
By contrast, the characters in Peters’ Detransition, Baby, demonstrate what it can look like to channel one’s queerness, specifically as it relates to gender failures, into the pursuit of liberatory alternatives to the hegemony. The novel centers around three characters as they attempt to come together with the goal of raising a baby. Ames is currently living as a man, having detransitioned after living six years as a transwoman. He has impregnated his current partner, a cisgendered woman named Katrina, who experiences her first encounter with queerness after learning of Ames’ history. Their dynamic is further complicated by the introduction of Reese, a transwoman, and Ames’ ex-girlfriend, who Ames feels is necessary for the success of their family, because “with Reese, I could be a parent without being seen as a father” (Peters 106). This proposal certainly fulfils Halberstam’s ideal of “imagining existing alternatives” that can exist in the realities of here and now, made possible by Ames’ willingness to use his gender failure as a catalyst for innovation.
Ames experiences gender failures in different ways throughout the different phases of his life. As a young man, he is keenly aware of how his desire to experience sex as a woman does not coincide with the messages he receives about masculinity, which eventually culminates in transitioning into Amy. Amy, still, experiences moments Lawlor’s Paul would call “flaws” in her gender presentation. Like Paul, Amy examines her own gender and the gender of others reflexively. She feels deeply troubled when her “flaws” present themselves. During an argument, she “snapped. Her voice came out from somewhere in her chest, low and angry. She sounded like a man. She heard it immediately, with a stab of shame” (Peters 253). Ultimately, the violence following this altercation led to her choice to detransition into Ames. Ames explains that “It was the last straw. Living as a trans woman just seemed too fucking hard after that” but adds that he still considers himself to be transgender, as “[it isn’t] something you outgrow” (Peters 98). Only because of Ames’ experiences failing to embody certain gender ideals is he able to conceive of and willing to advocate for the organization of this parenting arrangement.
As the three characters try to decide once and for all if they will have this baby together, Ames makes a particularly interesting comment. Ames asks Katrina and Reese to consider that “Maybe this is so awkward and hard and without obvious precedent because we’re trying to imagine our own solution, to reinvent something for ourselves” (Peters 337). Here, the trio is actively participating in the “queer art of failure.” Individually and together, they are reinventing womanhood, parenthood, and relationships. They are reinventing what family means, and how to cultivate one of their own. This moment perfectly encapsulates Halberstam’s vision for how queer people should fail, because it is inevitable that they will. He writes that “failure presents an opportunity rather than a dead end; in true camp fashion, the queer artist works with rather than against failure and inhabits the darkness. Indeed the darkness becomes a crucial part of a queer aesthetic” (Halberstam 96). Ames seems to understand this instinctively. He is trying to find a practical, applicable way to live “with rather than against failure.” It is also significant that Ames has not fully settled the question of gender, leaving open the possibility of transitioning to female again in the future.
Ames’ open-ended potential demonstrates that one does not need to be fully “actualized” or comfortable as a queer person before they can intentionally practice queer failure. As Halberstam writes, “There is something powerful in being wrong, in losing, in failing, and that all our failures combined might just be enough, if we practice them well, to bring down the winner” (120). This power comes with some risk, however. Sometimes, experiments in queer failure result in failures of a more traditional sense. To create something new is to accept that it might not work at all. This risk presents itself in the second half of the novel, as conflict begins to emerge between Reese and Katrina. Ames is left trying to salvage their tentative arrangement before things fall apart. Eventually, several things happen that truly threaten their potential family. Reese is briefly hospitalized after an incident at the beach that leads her friends to worry that she may be suicidal. Katrina, after Ames expresses that he might transition into a woman in the future, schedules an abortion. The novel ends without resolving these conflicts and questions, leaving the reader to wonder if this experiment will be successful or not.
Detransition, Baby includes multiple examples of failure that would appeal to Halberstam’s sensibilities, and others that seem to be failures without any potential for reclamation. Peters’ decision to end the novel before categorizing this family as one or the other is reflective of reality—there is no way to know how these attempts will end until they have been pursued. In this way, Detransition, Baby is perhaps an ode to The Queer Art of Failure, inviting the reader to hold curiosity, and to find out for themselves what may or may not work. As the plot revolves around the experiences of transgender people, however, it is important to note that each of these moments of potential can ultimately be traced back to an initial gender “failure.” Peters demonstrates the magnitude of ways in which one can fail forward in their journeys with gender, and just how crucial that initial step is if one wishes to walk down a path of positive failure in their own lives.
Works Cited
Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press, 2011.
Lawlor, Andrea. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl. Picador, 2020.
Peters, Torrey. Detransition, Baby. Libertalia, 2022.
Joshua S. Smith, and Kristin E. Smith. “What It Means to Do Gender Differently: Understanding Identity, Perceptions and Accomplishments in a Gendered World.” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, vol. 38, 2016, pp. 62–78. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/humjsocrel.38.62.