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Rowan Marie Abbott
I have a difficult relationship with the beach.
On the one hand, I’m obsessed with it. I have a list of addresses on my phone called “for your regularly scheduled mental breakdowns”—they’re all on board.
There is something comforting about this enormity. I can sit in the water and let it swallow me. Nothing but miles and miles of ocean; And I will be a tiny little dot embedded in it. Emphasis on timing or arguments within this mass is trivial.
And the waves? oh my godwaves.
I slide through the water and then, all of a sudden, this wall of sheer force rises up out of nowhere and hits me. I’m sent to the bottom, breaking up sand and seaweed and being spat out on shore, coughing up salt water. If the calm isn’t enough to get me out of my head, the beach is happy to try violence.
And it works! At that point, I’m not a buttoned up pro. I am a stupid mammal covered in flesh and hair. I am sensitive to cold and wet and salt and inertia. And I am aliveI am so alive. As soon as I catch my breath, I run back and am back in the ocean as fast as he spat me out. The ocean makes an insatiable masochist out of me.
However, this vulnerability is not perfect.
In December 2024 I got my name legally changed. A year later I started hormone replacement therapy. But I know I’ve been non-binary for over a decade; And I had this feeling that something is off about my body and how people perceive it for longer.
In the shower or dressing room, they find a body that is not entirely mine. Although I can do a doll of him, the performance is strained and awkward. Clothing—especially heavy sweaters—serves to suppress this discomfort. Granting or denying certain freedoms. With them I can pantomime a fluffy fluffed-up man. Not so on the beach.
By the water, I am almost naked. Plenty of clothing offers androgynous options, but a swimsuit? It’s all on display. For a body that is made to be a man, a top means something. It’s a gift for any kind of gender queerness a viewer can think of. Just as when I put on a dress and defy the gaze of those around me, it is a choice that makes me an acceptable target for violence.
Even if I stick to the expected trunk and just sit in my discomfort, I’m haunted by the feeling that—no matter what gender performance I perform—I’ll be doing it wrong. that the townspeople will not be convinced.
I opened this piece with a 1931 shot by James Wiley Frankenstein. In this scene, a monster approaches a young girl by a lake. It’s a welcome respite from the abuse he’s been subjected to at the hands of his creator. The girl smiles at him, offers him a flower, and teaches him how to dip flower buds into water to make little floating boats. It’s a tender moment. It doesn’t last.
The monster misunderstands her instruction, picks her up and throws her into the water. It’s harmless—or at least it’s meant to be.
But the girl does not know how to swim. And neither can the monster. So he drowns; And he can do nothing but watch in horror.
This is the scene that marks his death.
The girl’s father took her lifeless body to a festival in the city of Goldstadt. As she passes out—shocked and confused, her eyes cast upward, as if wondering why God would take her little girl—the townspeople stop celebrating, witness the horror, and eventually turn into an angry mob. Who could do such a thing? Frankenstein replies: A monster of his own making. They decided to find the poor thing, hunt it down, capture it and kill it.
I see myself reflected in this scene – in the monster’s glee, in his attempts to break the bond, and in the terrible consequences of his transgression.
Transness is often seen as inherently violent. The question is not whether a trans subject is committing some form of verbal abuse. Trans school teachers are viewed as a threat to their students, trans healthcare professionals are viewed as a threat to their patients, and trans people on the beach are treated as a threat to everyone around them. There is no need for any actual fighting. It is enough to have a trans body – it is considered as an already committed violation.
I remember walking home from the Pride parade – wearing makeup and a skirt. It was dark and I was alone. My apartment was just a few blocks away. And yet the walk was excruciating. I could not shake the thought that if I were approached, if anyone saw me, I might be seen as the aggressor, and thus any attack would be justified as self-defense.
Beyond my personal identification with the pursuit of the monster, I’m also not the first to see Frankenstein’s creation as having a kind of trans-essence (Susan Stryker’s words come to mind). But the moment by the lake is a particularly strong argument for this connection for me.
The imagined violence that trans people are so often blamed for is almost always accompanied by child abuse. In Whale’s film (and most films) the young girl functions as a primordial symbol of innocence. He is the crown of the family unit; representative of the supposed goodness and purity of heteronormativity. Through the monster and the trans subject of the real world, it is destroyed by proximity to crime, not by intent.
In the sequel to the movie, Bride of FrankensteinThere is a scene depicting this scene by the lake. Instead of throwing the girl into a watery grave, the creature saves the woman from drowning in the river. The result is the same. The mob hunts him down, surrounds him, and crucify him.
I think the monster knew what was going to happen – he knew that no good deed would go unpunished. I think he knew he was being persecuted in his presence.
I think he just couldn’t stay out of the water.
Rowan Marie Abbott (They/They) is a graduate student and faculty member in the English Department at Lehigh University. Their academic interests include trans* theory, film and horror. They also have a lot of gender envy towards The Thing thing.
