The Hair, The Fur, The Blood

Text by Morrigan Fogarty

Art by Alžbeta Szabová

A slip of the razor and there is now blood drying on my face. I brush it off and my hand becomes aware of where my hair has become tangled in the fur of my coat. A coat given to me by someone who has only ever seen me as I want to be. 

In the light of the moon, the beast’s bones crack, its form shifts, it has nothing left to hide as it assumes its new form, half man, half beast.

I have no makeup on, I have facial hair under my pale skin, trying to break through, a constant reminder.

It is no wolf, it is no man, it is at once both and neither, but it is free, free to do as it pleases. Until they come.

The blood, fur and hair tangle, and I am kept safe in the meaning. 

The Beast, the monster; it holds no meaning, no true form, only the transition, only the in-between, its joy a reclamation of its freedom, its claim to humanity

A body out of sight, covered in scars and bruises, a body shifting and changing, a body destroying all that is sacred and holy. I do not walk with this skin like an imposter, I do not put on the airs of a woman and seek to fool anyone, I am what I am, a body cut and shaped into something greater than the circumstances of its birth. 

What are they scared of when they see her? Her form, something going against what can be, something that never was and never can be, yet is here, staring at them. 

I see the townsfolk coming to slaughter her, to deny her what makes her human. To obliviate the Other and sublimate their own feelings of discomfort in the shunning of the freak, the beast, the unholy.

There is no gender for the Beast, it is something truly Other.

The whore androgyne must be killed not for its transgression of boundaries, but for its illustration of the fragility of boundaries.

It is in these forms, forms between states, that the states themselves crumble.

I am no man, I have chosen this form so it suits me, and this cutting and shaping has cast aside the label of man, yet as ever is obvious, many would seek to deny me. I do not mean deny me of rights or privileges, I mean deny me of existence. I do not fit neatly into a category, I am feminine - but not too much -, I refuse to change the voice I’ve had for years, I refuse to update my passport. My path is one of sufficiency not reliant on something from above..

I do not believe in divinity, and I do not believe in divine femininity. Those people, the TERFs, who cling to the rotting corpse of division between genders, purport my existence to be that of a fool or worse a predator. They are the ones who still cling to these ideals. They scramble to define themselves not as beings of choice, but as beings granted some privilege from above, the privilege of being a woman whose woman-ness is unquestioned. I do not have, nor want such privilege, I carve my identity out of that body that I inhibit. 

There is the beast, the werewolf, cursed to lose their form and become something unholy, unchecked, something truly wild. This is the monster I see myself in, not the suave and pristine vampire, so often attached to sexuality and reeking of gender, but a creature that casts aside categorisation through itself. There are two paths in its meaning, shun the beast and the curse and become man, become out of sight through assimilation, or shun the man and become beast, out of sight in your queerness, in your otherness, neatly set aside into gender studies or pathologised into the medical sphere. I chose neither, I am not out of sight. I am here. Staring at you.

I spend days cutting the hair, cutting the fur that covers my face, my body, and yet it grows back. Perhaps one day it will stop and a new beast will emerge, but for now I shave the hair and don the fur that I choose. The clothes, the skirts, dresses, and coats that cover this skin are a transformation not from a curse, not from a blessing, but from myself.

This is a radical act, as evidenced by my homeland banning my presence. I am only allowed in if I hide that beastly part of myself, that womanly part of myself that I become through transformation, through transition. They hate me, they fear me, and they kill me, they’ve killed my friends, they’ve killed elders who have seen the world with my eyes and who I will never get to meet, never get to share a drink with, never get to cry with. But as these eyes see and cry for the world before them, as the fascists and liberals begin to gnaw their teeth and thrash out against the “Transgender”, I know that it is weakness that propels them. A weakness to cling to fake categories that give them the power to oversee, control, and understand us. I am not easily understood. 

To those like me, those who hear them coming with their pitchforks, fire and swords I have but this to say:

Bare your teeth, sharpen your claws, love your friends and above all:

Carpe Jugulum