WHEN LANGUAGE LIMITS THE LUST: MOMENTS OF DESIRE IN UNGENDERED NARRATIVE.

• Author: Jetubhai, Khuman Bhagirathkumar
• Position: Essay

1. Introduction

   Ungendered narrative is fiction where one or more characters' gender is kept secret throughout the entire work, or in a significant portion of it. We witness the characters take part in actions that move the plot forward with their gender identity fiercely protected by the writer. Matters get more complicated when the characters make love. The readers know the characters are in an intimate state, but do not have any idea about the gender of the couple. Richardson writes in a similar vein: "The strategy that causes the most consternation among conventional readers, however, is the refusal to identify the gender of the narrator, especially when the narrator is involved in sexual acts" (Richardson 2008:4). The rare feat of hiding gender in ungendered narrative, even during romantic scenes, is achieved through the masterful use of language. The writer also needs to make sure that scenes do not become complex and the reading experience still remains pleasurable.

   In Written on the Body (1993), a novel by Jeanette Winterson, the narrator is ungendered, but the love interest is a woman named Louise. Hence, we know the gender of one of the couple. David Levithan's The Lover's Dictionary (2011) has a male narrator whose lover's gender is not revealed. Love Child (1971) by Maureen Duffy has two ungendered characters--Kit and Ajax, the lover of Kit's mother. In the intimate scenes between Kit's mother and her lover the gender of one person in the couple is clear. June Arnold in The Cook and the Carpenter (1973) uses ungendered pronoun na and nan, and characters named cook, carpenter and Three, thus we have no idea of whether the couple engaged in lovemaking consists of the same gender, opposite gender, or have non-normative gender identities. The same is the case with Brooklyn, Burning (2011) by Steve Brezenoff, which has lovers Kid and Scout as gender-secretive characters. Anne Garreta includes a character identified as A*** and an unnamed, ungendered narrator madly in love in Sphinx (1986).

   In this three-part paper, textual passages from these six novels are analysed. The first part discusses how bodies are depicted and desired. The second part is about solo pleasure. Intimacies between two bodies are probed in the third part.

2. Describing the body

   How to describe a genderless body? The writer needs to make sure they reveal enough to make the person sound desirable, but must also not reveal the gender of the body. In The Lover's Dictionary, Levithan walks a tightrope. He uses 'peak of your chest' instead of gender-specific words like 'breast'. Another gender nonspecific body part mentioned by the author is the neck: "The nape of your neck. Even the sound of the word nape sounds holy to me. That the hollow of your neck, the peak of your chest that your shirt sometimes reveals. These are the stations of my quietest, most insistent desire" (Levithan 2012:177). Garreta's dexterous character sketch of A*** in Sphinx leaves readers guessing about the character's gender, but that does not make the description any less erotic:

   Those hips, narrow and broad at the same time, those legs that I never knew how to describe except, mundanely, as slim and long. But it wasn't this that made them desirable to me--when we made love, I couldn't stop caressing them, my lips against the inner thighs--it was something else, always something else, this indefinable something else where desire hide itself. Perhaps I was enticed by the slow motion of the dance, before my eyes sublimely taking the body out its rhythm (Garreta 2015:84). Certain body images that are fixed in our minds are based on gender stereotypes. Ideally, girls should have a slim body, and boys a muscular physique. A female bodybuilder is never considered beautiful. (1) Garreta plays with that idea by describing the narrator's love interest as having 'hips narrow and broad at the same time', she makes it difficult for the readers to gauge the gender of the character. A little further, the author heightens the intensity by mentioning the 'inner thighs'. The reader begins to feel that the author will now reveal what is between the thighs, and thus disclosing the gender of the characters, but it never happens.

   In the beginning of the novel, Garreta narrates a scene in a strip club. Surprisingly, none of the dancers' gender is revealed:

   I noticed ironically that the dancers spent more time adjusting these little delicate nothings that elude nudity than one would dressing oneself from head to toe for gala at the Opera... a thousand details in order to show off a behind, leaving the thighs and hips free and visible, but without revealing the crotch. I was amazed at the time it took for a body always to appear smooth, hairless, supple, and flawless: in a word, angelic (Garreta 2015:8-9). The images are of skimpily clad bodies on display, with a little covering that hides the private parts. There is no mention of an ample bosom or bulge on the crotch. To further quote Garreta, "There a thousand details to consider when putting on a simple g-string that never even cross the mind of the socialite pulling on her long gown or the man fastening a bow tie on the wing collar of his shirt" (2015:9). The same can be said of how an author describes bodies. Clothed bodies are easier to describe, but not naked bodies, as gender can be easily given away with the slightest hint. Garreta also questions the needless importance we attribute to clothes and dressing that further segregate people according to gender, such as the expectation that skirts are worn only by women. The narrator stands naked in front of a mirror, looks at the reflection and ponders, 'was it really that important how I choose to veil my nudity?' (Garreta 2015:41). In everyday life, trans and genderqueer persons are laughed at, mocked, and called names when a person who appears to be male chooses to cover their body with so-called woman's clothes. (2)

   Garreta's skilfully crafted writing is evident in the following: "That night, A*** was wearing a black silk shirt and white pleated leather pants that showed off a firm behind. A***'s hair, shaved not long for the show, was beginning to grow back, materializing as a light shadow" (2015:39). The writer's mention of the sexually enticing 'firm behind' is followed by the shaved head that diminishes the eroticism of the image. A cisgender man reading the sentence would like to imagine that A*** is a woman with shapely buttocks, but the phrase 'hair, shaved not long' goes against the ideal female beauty standard. Men with shaved heads can be considered desirable, but women are not. "Historically, shaving women's heads as a form of punishment was firmly established during and in the aftermath of, World War II" (Alexandra 2017).

3. Pleasuring the body

   The texts in consideration are replete with images of ungendered characters pleasuring themselves. In gendered narratives, the masturbatory experience is described as such:

   She runs her hands down her belly. Her right forefinger touches the clitoris while the left forefinger goes deep inside her, pretending to be a penis. What does a penis feel, surrounded by those soft, collapsing caves of flesh? Her finger is too small. She puts in two and spreads them... She moves her fingers to that rhythm, feeling the two inside get creamy and the clitoris get hard and red... She feels the convulsions of the orgasm suck violently around her fingers. Her hand falls to her side and then she sinks into a dead sleep (Jong 1973). Words and phrases like 'she', 'clitoris', and 'caves of flesh' prove that the character is a woman. However, in ungendered narrative, the scene is completely different. There is no mention of genitals that...