100% Authentic Transgender Knot

~ or ~

跨性别结

Kuà xìngbié jié

“This March, I went to Asia for the first time. I spent a lot of time shopping for materials. I walked down streets with stalls overflowing onto the roads, mopeds weaving between them. I went to multi story malls full of art supplies shining under fluorescent lights.

I was struck by the amount of plastic I saw. Plastic beads, plastic cord, plastic tassels, plastic bags. And it wasn’t limited only to the shops. The temples and shrines I visited were also full of it: grand plastic depictions of Buddha, offerings placed on shiny red plastic trays, and wrapped snacks set at the feet of deities. Seeing all this sent a twinge through me—the growing pit of plastic in the ocean loomed in my mind. But it also forced me to reconsider what I view as “artificial” and “synthetic.”

In America, the phrase made in China has a connotation of cheapness and illegitimacy. If something is made of plastic, it is less authentic than the same object hewn from wood or forged from metal. Similarly, if something was produced recently, it has less cultural weight than the same thing made decades earlier.

Yet as I was in Asia, I realized that many objects that were made from plastic still operated as the “real” thing. People still hung knots made of synthetic cord in their homes to protect them from evil spirits. People still prayed at shrines made of plastic materials. Were these objects less holy because of what they’re made of? Is the magic of prayer rendered null by plastic?

This question of artificiality broadened as I began to tie 跨性别结. This piece is made almost entirely out of plastic materials I bought in Asia—things I purchased from vendors in Hà Nội using broken Vietnamese, or straight from sellers in Shànghǎi.

When I tie a knot, my fingers pinching tiny threads between pins, I sometimes imagine that I’m performing surgery. Over the past five years, I and many of my loved ones have received various surgeries for gender affirming care. Our bodies have been shaped and scarred over. We have skinned our limbs and built new parts. And as public visibility of transgender people in America has increased, so has the derision of our healthcare.

There is a perception that trans people are new, artificial creations. I can’t deny that there is an element of newness to many of our lives. The surgery that I received did not exist 100 years ago. Some of us are imbued with plastic, through the operations that reopen and close our bodies.

The definition of plastic is thus: capable of being shaped or formed. I can think of no better way to describe our transgender bodies, this beautiful thing we’ve been changing for hundreds of years."