In 2007’s The Marrow’s Telling:  Words In Motion—a collection of poetry and prose—disability activist Eli Clare examines the way bodies carry history and identity over time.  In particular, he maps the physical ramifications of his Cerbal Palsy, rural heritage, gender transgressions, queer sexuality and abuse survival. Identifying as “a white, disabled, rural, mixed-classed, English-speaking, ftm-spectrum genderqueer who lives as a guy,” Clare says, “the only ethical way to name myself is to acknowledge the ways I’m privileged as well as marginalized.”

Clare is the author of 1999’s Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, heralded as a landmark text in the formation of queer/disability studies.  He once walked across the continental United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program and co-organized the first-ever Queerness and Disability Conference. He works for the University of Vermont ‘s LGBTQA Services.

Available this month, The Marrow’s Telling represents Homofactus Press (homofactuspress.com)’s dedication to work by and for trans and genderqueer men.  Upcoming events to promote the anthology includes Clare’s Oct. 27 presentation at the University of Michigan: “Gaping, Gawking, Staring: Living in Marked Bodies.”

Earlier this year, Clare was the keynote speaker at the Forge Forward conference, where he addressed his concerns with those who “name their transness a disability [or] a birth defect.”

Primarily rising from who use, or wish to use, medical technology to transition, Clare argues that the cure terminology, “takes for granted that disability is an individual medical problem …[and] runs counter to the work of disability rights activists who frame disability as an issue of social justice. Many of us aren’t looking for cures but for civil rights.”  Furthermore, he says, “While I want to respect the people who frame their transness this way…Disability in no way assures decent health care. Instead [doctors] trivialize and patronize us…and sometimes even think we’d be better off dead.”

“In short,” Clare summarizes, “if trans people are going to use the rhetoric of disability to explain their experiences of gender and bodily difference, they’d better…understand the real lived experience of disability, not rely on oppressive stereotypes or undermine the political work of disability activists.”

Instead of focusing on medical intervention, Clare suggests a politics of self-determination that would allow trans communities to, “separate from a medical establishment that still functions as a gatekeeper in many trans people’s lives.  We desperately need a health care system based upon…the valuing of what each of us knows about our own bodies, and upon the idea that health care is a human right, not a commodity to buy and sell.”

Still, Clare believes that trans people can learn from the disability community by reaching “deep into the lived experiences of our bodies—whether they be trans, disabled, neither or both, [questioning] the idea of normal and the notion of cure, [resisting] shame and the medicalization of identity, and [embracing] bodily difference while understanding that for many people medical technologies are important, even essential, tools.”

Clare also believes that “crip activists need to understand that trans people have a stake in disability law and not disown us—as happened [with] the Americans with Disabilities Act, when Jesse Helms specifically wrote [out] transsexuals.  Disability lobbyists and activist didn’t protest [because] they wanted their bill to pass.”

Passages of The Marrow’s Telling confront Clare’s traumatic childhood, but he admits, “I struggled with my decision to write about childhood sexual and ritual abuse, but…to not write about violence in this context would be supremely dishonest. Much of my work arises from the traditions of political and feminist poetry where storytelling as witness is particularly important.”

Like so many other LGBT individuals, Clare fled his small town along Oregon’s coast for more urban environments.  While he insists the flight, “literally saved my life,” he says, “I lost so much too: a daily sustaining connection with a geography that I still call home…[and] the rootedness that comes with decades—or actually generations— lived in the same house or down the same road. It’s hard to talk about these losses without sounding nostalgic or romantic [but] the losses are real.”  

Note:  trans author Jacob Anderson-Minshall (jake@trans-nation.org) provides marketing and publicity for Homofactus Press, the FTM publishing house behind The Marrow’s Telling.