Rundale

by Fiadh Tubridy

Wild Geese is the first novel by Irish author, Soula Emmanuel, a Greek-Irish trans woman whose experiences living and studying in Sweden and Denmark provide the backdrop to the narrative. While we should be wary of centring ‘trans firsts’ which frame trans people as always just being discovered and bolster a liberal teleology of inevitable social progress, it is also seemingly the first published novel by an Irish trans author.

Despite this, I’m mostly interested in the book because I find it engaging and relatable. The author has written that it’s aimed at those ‘who like their trans fiction peppered with references to obscure figures from Irish popular culture’ which is a niche this reader is happy to occupy. It’s also about a young Irish trans woman living an isolated existence in Copenhagen while working in academia, which powerfully reminded me of the time I spent in Copenhagen in a similar situation, doing my PhD and thinking big thoughts about gender. Beyond that, I also think there’s something that can be understood from it – even if only in a partial and fragmented way – about transgender liberalism as it operates in Ireland and elsewhere, including what it does and doesn’t offer to its subjects.

The book’s protagonist, Phoebe, is a 30 year old trans woman living in relative comfort in a luxurious apartment in Copenhagen, which she’s looking after for a friend while working in a semi-stable academic job as a PhD student in a Swedish university. She is jolted out of her comfortable but isolated existence by an ex-girlfriend, Grace, who turns up unexpectedly on her doorstep. The weekend they spend together as they talk about their relationship and all that has happened in the intervening years provides the basic structure of the narrative.

From a literary perspective, the book mercifully and self-consciously avoids the hackneyed ‘born in the wrong body’ transition stories beloved of cis audiences – as Phoebe observes, “I know what boredom is. I’ve read a lot of trans memoirs” – and instead concerns itself more with the less sensational everyday lives of trans people. At the same time, related to the protagonist’s isolated existence and the absence of other trans characters, a good deal of the narrative revolves around Phoebe’s explanation of her ‘journey’ to Grace, which does in a way function as a mode of exposition to a cis audience.

One interesting aspect of the work is that it reflects the changing social and material context for trans lives associated with the new found privileges and visibility of trans people in liberal political systems, including Ireland. One notable illustration of this is the description of Phoebe going through the legal gender recognition process in Ireland introduced under the 2015 Gender Recognition Act. But it’s particularly fascinating in providing insights regarding labour and class associated with Phoebe’s status working in a respectable professional job.

It’s practically a cliché amongst trans women that the available employment opportunities are limited to sex work, barista and tech, and it is a new and precarious development to have any access to work outside these sectors. According to author Jules Gill Petersen this is also part of the reason for the current backlash and moral panic directed towards trans people who have started making claims for material prosperity and social position beyond what was previously the case.

This situation reflects the advance of transgender liberalism as a policy agenda and the corresponding HR policies that allow trans people like Phoebe to keep their jobs while transitioning. As a general phenomenon transgender liberalism is about media representation, trans pride flags, diversity policies and legal gender recognition underpinned by the idea that acceptance, visibility and ‘trans rights’ are the solution to our problems. In so doing it sets aside questions of fundamental change in social and economic systems, for example, in housing and employment conditions, which are often more pressing problems for working class trans people than whether their boss flies the trans flag during pride month. It’s thus an agenda that benefits a small cohort of privileged upper and middle class trans people while making elites look progressive. As described by Nat Raha, “without challenging the existing inequality of society, trans activism, modelled on ‘successful’ liberal lesbian and gay rights initiatives, advocates for social inclusion that occurs with and through the disenfranchisement of the poor.”

In fact, Wild Geese doesn’t tell us anything about those most acutely affected by societal transphobia and left out of the benefits of liberal reforms. But it does provide a moral and aesthetic critique of transgender liberalism by reflecting on the limited advantages it provides even to those who are set to gain most, by sketching out a sort of psychological profile of the transgender liberal subject. It’s quickly apparent that Phoebe’s situation is one of extreme isolation and uncertainty because her ability to access safety and material comfort by cutting herself off from a generally hostile world comes at the cost of deep loneliness: “by living alone, I am surrounding myself with the people I feel most comfortable with.”

There are also interesting parallels between the protagonists’ inner world and the worldview fostered by liberal and identity-centred trans politics, specifically Phoebe’s inability to recognise the very real problems faced by her ex in Ireland, including precarious housing and sexual harassment at work, and the fact that she, in many ways, has it pretty good. Touchingly, it is Grace who identifies some of the common struggles faced by trans and cis women while thinking about her own experience of having an illegal abortion and Phoebe’s of accessing trans healthcare through self-medication: “Of course, I also got pills over the internet.” In some ways the book pokes fun at the self-pity, introversion and naivety of the protagonist in a manner that parallels the original and best of the semi-satirical sad trans girl genre, Imogen Binnie’s Nevada.

Clara Paige, in another review of Wild Geese writes insightfully about how it’s common for trans people to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and become very focused on our own struggles in our efforts to start afresh. What I would add based on my reading is that the ability to do so is oftenly unevenly distributed, something that only a small number of the most materially secure of us can aspire to, and also that, while tempting, it’s ultimately an unsatisfying experience. Critically, it cuts us off from what Jules Gleeson identifies as “the central work of reciprocal recognition” performed by trans communities, which is what actually enables “our particular pursuit of human flourishing”. This is the exact same point made by Paige in her review where she describes how she was able to develop her sense of self and ability to engage with the world but that “I didn’t do it alone; I constructed myself in relation to others”.

In a recent essay Soula Emmanuel wrote how publishing a book involves handing it over to the others to do what they want with it, but that once the initial flurry of attention dies down the author gets it back “somewhat scuffed and somewhat polished by the attention of other people”. I hope that through my interpretation I’ve both scuffed it and polished it a bit and trust that others will continue to do the same.