The Unicorn: On Liminality, Transmisogyny, and Numinous Synthesis

 

Two wandering poets undergo a pilgrimage to the highest mountain in the world, where they find a unicorn, beautiful and powerful. The experience was numinous-- that is, it referenced and amplified the presence of something spiritual, even more beautiful and powerful than itself-- and it changed both poets' lives irrevocably.

One poet says to the other: "That was unlike any other experience. I am now convinced that this unicorn was created by a different god than the rest of the animals." The second responds: "I feel the opposite! I have an expanded appreciation for the gods who created this earth, now that I know they created this unicorn too."

Both poets bristle. How could the other poet deny their experience, seeing this beautiful and powerful object? Aren't they listening?

--

Words like jazz, pain, and capitalism are also beautiful and powerful. We have numinous experiences with them when we classify music as jazz, generalize about what is painful, or become oppressed under capitalism. When we discuss them, we embody these poets, and in my experience our conversations become difficult, but generative. This is because, in embodying these poets, we step into the limen between generation and reclamation, between expanding categories like "god" or "jazz" and creating new, exciting ones.

Is fusion jazz? Is pain pleasure? Are all taxonomies capitalist? This limen is powerful and comfortable because when presented with a beautiful powerful word, we are not forced to collapse the ambiguity that gives it power. Outside the limen we lack this privilege.

Is Duchamp's "The Fountain" art?

Poet 1: "Denying that 'The Fountain' is art undersells the expansiveness and power of art."

Poet 2: "No, saying that 'The Fountain' is art co-opts the word art, turning it into an empty signifier that means little more than 'good'."

While I don't find both arguments equally compelling, it's important to recognize that both poets in this case are arguing that the other is not respecting the numinous power present in the word art. And no compromise can be made if either party feels the power of the numinous word has been diminished-- it would feel like a total denial of one's own experiences. Thus, the understandable reactions of "meeting in the middle", "making our positions more nuanced", or "taking things to the marketplace of ideas" are not enough. Neither is simply concluding "the more expansive definition captures more nuance", "we need words to mean something", or "two things can be true, you know" on principle. We are after bigger game.

No, in situations like this, where we're squabbling over numinous encounters we've had with ambiguous words, we must realize that neither poet makes sense without the other, in order to affirm a greater spiritual connection with the force from which they both stem. This isn't a claim about correctness, but a claim about comprehensibility-- after all, "0=0" and "0=1" need each other to make sense, but only one is true in any functional mathematical system.

I'll say it again-- Our goal is not greater nuance, but understanding how neither poet makes sense without the other, in order to affirm our spiritual connection with the numinous.

--

So in the same way I ask "Is pain pleasure?", I also ask:

Who is affected by transmisogyny?

One popular belief is that only a subset of trans people are affected, creating a group of "transmisogyny exempt" people that require a host of language like "TME" to describe them. It's natural for people bluntly hurt by transmisogyny to want language to discuss it. However, I strongly believe that the language of "TME" and "TMA" is harmful nonsense. My instinct is to just say so, and leave it at that-- but this would be destructive.

The issue is that both of us poets have had a numinous encounter with the word "transmisogyny". This word arrived, like an angel, to help us make sense of our lives, relate to one another, and ultimately love one another. Surprising as it may seem, the word "transmisogyny" is beautiful and powerful like the unicorn.

Thus when we argue, we embody the poets, and I am embodying the second. The issue is that "How dare you disrespect the gods who created the unicorn?" very easily spills into shutting out any new conceptions of the gods. Even worse, I have coerced myself into underselling the word transmisogyny's beauty and power in order to relate it more easily to familiar conceptions of the word "god"-- and if I do that, anyone would be right to be mad at me.

So what should I, as the second poet do? I might talk about experiences I've had where "TME" language enshrines a false logic of "women are more oppressed than men; therefore trans women are more oppressed than trans men". I might talk about how deciding whether a person is "TME" co-opts people who seemingly have authority over such things (transfemmes, for example) into a degendering, all-reducing force. And I might talk about how I've seen the same tools and seeds of transmisogyny weaponized against the supposedly-exempt-- even against cis people! In summary, I would talk about the beautiful powerful word "transmisogyny" and my experiences with it.

--

And now, remember our goal-- we don't politely compromise, we don't argue about whether the numinous word is important, and we most certainly do not talk in circles for an hour, self-congratulating about how reasonable and nuanced we can be. We have faith that neither poet makes sense without the other; how is that true here? Of course now it's obvious-- the numinous word. When we ponder this, we poets come to understand why we hold our beliefs so intensely, and why we would be upset at one another over them.

And with some thought, hopefully we come to graft one another's experiences into our own understandings of transmisogyny. And while we may continue to discuss specific things like whether "TME" is a helpful term (I still think it isn't!), we've entered a safer space to talk about the harms we've experienced. We no longer risk offhandedly saying (or pressuring ourselves into believing) that the numinous word is not as powerful as the other poet says it is. We're no longer signaling that our values aren't just butting heads, but forever incompatible due to the strength of our beliefs. And over time, our bodies might come to recognize that there's no need to spend their energy worrying about whether they will be excluded talking to the other poet.

And if in the end we poets really disagree about jazz or "TME", we actually know what we've disagreed about. If we hadn't, we would be fuming over something that didn't happen-- the nerve of the other poet for not listening to you.

And maybe now, with this spiritual experience further amplified, we can start writing the poetry we wandered all the way up this mountain to write.

In Development: TERMINAL and Zephrys

So I'm gonna try something. Unless I go into a lyric frenzy and make a microgame, the next game I'll release will be a little thing called TERMINAL. It's not gonna be ready for a hot minute (my fault for making a game that needs playtesting, of all things) but I thought it might interest folks to get a little sneak peek at the game!

I'll talk about the game, but it'll inevitably touch upon broader theory-- so even if you aren't remotely interested in TERMINAL, this is still for you.

Obvious disclaimer that anything I discuss here are subject to change, blablabla.

What's it about?

Thematically, TERMINAL is about a bunch of weird creatures, like a murder of crows in a trenchcoat or a blathering sphinx named Blessica, standing around in an airport chit-chatting. It's absurd and slightly pretentious, and despite the colorful cast it's very much a game about the mundane and disconnected.

Mechanically, TERMINAL is a play-by-post game where you speak mostly in pre-made sentences or structures. Literally, the game can end when someone gets tired of sticking to the pre-made moves.

Personality

All the characters in TERMINAL are a little obtuse. Some might say "cringy".

To show you what I mean, here are some moves from Moonly, a fairy that lives in a ship in a bottle and has her own alternate tarot set. The moves are simple: You just say them at the appropriate time.

At the first possible opportunity: I made my own divination deck. I call it "pigeon tarot". It's not just for pigeons, though.

When you want to be a bit rude: You're a real [made-up arcana], you know that... sorry, you don't know what that means, do you?

I love these moves, because it's how I introduced my projects when I was a kid (and sometimes now)-- shoehorn it into the conversation, often at the cost of whatever other message I was trying to convey. Honestly, it's sort of satisfying that I get to make a game where these are valid moves-- it's a sort of middle finger to every adult who was ever tired of me.

The thing is, all the characters are like this. Myrd, a knight with a quilt for armor and a broom for a spear, will play a variant of the sandwich debate game when there's a lull in the conversation-- not at all bad (in fact, lots of potential to be interesting), just not the way I would go in what broader society considers "conversation". None of the characters really respect social mores.

And that's good, I think, for two reasons. The first is that a lot of small-talk etiquette is boring and incomprehensible to me, and if I had to listen to my playtesters play a game that faithfully replicates "normal" conversation I'd probably lose blood to my ears as a self-defense mechanism. These are weird people, and it's also a game, so it's okay if the way they talk isn't boring.

Wishes

The second reason it's good that these characters don't really have the tools to have a normal conversation brings me to Hearthstone.

See, in Hearthstone there's a card called Zephrys the Great.

Zephrys's effect allows you to "wish for the perfect card". That means that the computer will look at the board state, generate a list of Hearthstone cards that could be useful, and present you with three of them. You put one of them into your hand.

It's sort of like "Put any card that's ever been printed into your hand". As a variant of that card, though, it sort of fails. Remember, the computer has to choose the cards. It's pretty good at the basics (opponent has 6 health? How about a fireball that deals 6 damage?) but, like computers tend to be, it's imperfect. Zephrys doesn't know what cards are in your hand, and often misses non-attack damage already on the board. It certainly won't notice combos based around, for example, returning itself to your hand and playing itself again ad infinitum to turn any card that does something when you play a guy into a win condition. The dude's just not terribly observant.

Because of that, though, the way players interact with Zephrys is very funny-- they treat him sort of like a person! Players will ask "How do I make sure that Zephrys gives me a good card here?". They'll make moves to simplify the board, sometimes making bad trades, to make sure he doesn't get sidetracked by some complicated board state. I've heard of  more than one instance of "It's technically correct to play this first, but that might make Zephrys give me the wrong cards".

Essentially, the player has to enter dialogue with an inanimate object. What could have been frustrating ("Why doesn't the computer find lethal?") becomes a personality quirk ("Oh, silly Zephrys doesn't see that I have 6 damage on the board!"

TERMINAL is like that too. If I presented it as a way to generate a completely natural flow of polite conversation you'd be super disappointed. Thus, the best course of action is to signal that hey, it's okay that this is an unnatural flow of conversation.

The best possible scenario is that a player looks at their playbook and occasionally goes "Well, I may not be able to respond normally... but, oh goodness, I can say that."

Disconnect

Honestly, TERMINAL is going to be a game about disconnect.

You're given these sort of awkward characters with sort of awkward dialogue, stuff that flows into itself enough that the game is fun and playable but not enough that you're like "Ah, this resembles a normal conversation". And while you're supposed to take on these roles, you have an imperfect tool-- so you do the Zephrys thing and enter dialogue with an inanimate object, thoroughly cementing it as something that's not you. Not even something you're embodying or that represents you, like your face on a Zoom call, just something that you're pretending is you for the duration of this social event.

...Oh, sounds queer!