Respond to one of the ideas about sex, gender, masculinity, or femininity in either Nelson’s or Sedgwick’s text that interests (or challenges) you.
In Maggie Nelson’s, The Argonauts, she tells the story of her partner transitioning into a male while Nelson is undergoing motherhood through her pregnancy of her son. She starts the piece with an interview when a mother “comes face to face with death”(1), as she learns that her daughter expresses their transition from female to male. From Nelson’s point of view she explains her inability to understand how a parent expresses a loathe against their own child, someone they love and questions how “one person’s liberation is another’s loss?”(2). Nelson’s partner reminds her that the first part of the transition process began with anger and fear of the unknown, what changes would be manifested by “T” and gender reassessment surgery. In the beginning of Harry’s injections, Nelson expresses her worry for non-gender specific health risks, on page 51, she states “I focused on the risks of elevated cholesterol and threats to your cardiovascular system that T might cause”(3), her thorough detail throughout the piece amplifies the normalcy that is necessary in the transgender community, specifically in the transition process.
Page 86 discusses the rollercoaster that both partners are enduring the text states, “Our bodies grew stranger, to ourselves, to each other.”(4), Nelson mentions in the piece that her pregnancy was a way to becoming more feminine and her partner Harry was defining his identity through becoming a male, the transitions occurred simultaneously.
- Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (London: Melville House UK, 2016), 50.
- Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (London: Melville House UK, 2016), 50.
- Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (London: Melville House UK, 2016), 51.
- Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (London: Melville House UK, 2016), 86.
