On [Be]coming in Boystown

Abstract

This article is about trans-, gender, sexuality, and fantasy and their mutual materialization through uses of technology and contact with the bodies of others. I aim to theorize the relationship between trans- and fantasy—my transness and my fantasies—especially as I struggle to find their realization in a cultural milieu that insists upon limited and fixed identity categories, categories that I argue thwart desire. I explore the relative lack of attention to trans- desire and sexuality in academic work and in public and political discourse and argue for the importance of attention to the erotic in understandings of trans-. Thus, I complicate notions of (mis)recognition that characterize many post-structuralist theorizations of trans- subjectivity in favor of centering the erotic. I tease out threads of my own fantasies and their materialization as they were realized in one weekend trip to Boystown in Chicago. Ultimately, my aim is to open more discursive space for considerations of trans- fantasies and sexuality and to argue that it is crucial for us to pay more critical attention to fantasies and their fulfillment in our consideration of what it means to be trans-, indeed, what it means to become a gendered and sexual body at all.