Monsters don't speak; they roar

Sara Moiseff, 05/01/26

Unlike most of my essays, this is a deeply personal series of poetic short stories. This essay contains vivid descriptions of violence that may be disturbing to read.

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I feel the sensation always. Those few moments, then, when I am otherwise occupied, are sweet, even as the pain is sharp.

I grimace as I remember what day of the week it is. I grimace as I remove the medical supplies from my bathroom drawer. I grimace as the smell of the alcohol wipes transports me mentally to the hospital. I grimace as I sanitize the vial of estradiol and my own flesh; I grimace as I draw exactly 2 mL. I grimace as I swap one needle for another, and I grimace as I plunge the needle through my flesh. I grimace as I depress the plunger; I grimace as I remove the needle; I grimace as blood begins to spill from the puncture wound.

In Detransition: Beyond before and after, Max Robinson identifies medical transition as a sado-ritual.[ii] Robinson, of course, is a myopic misogynist who thinks that "transwomen" are evil rapists, that "FTMs" are deluded women, and that Janice Raymond is a feminist icon. Her book is 189 pages of drivel meant to pressure trans men into detransition — and yet, she manages to identify something real.

There is masochistic pleasure in sex change. As the needles are inserted, as the scalpels slice my flesh, I am punished — not for "being born in the wrong body" but merely for having a body at all. A body: that which must eat, sleep, hurt, shit, ache, groan, die. Having a body: humanity's sin. As I shove the needle into my belly, reaching a depth of 5/8", I am reminded that I am always meat first.

I feel the sensation as soon as I awake. In fact, it wakes me up early; I shouldn't be awake before 7 AM on a weekend. But I can't sleep, haven't slept well in months. Groggily I run a hand over my face, squeezing my eyes shut. I roll over, stumbling out of bed and towards the chair where I keep my clothes.

Something is wrong. I turn around, my eyes still adjusting to the light. My right arm sits on the bed, motionless, marinating in a pool of blood. I look down: my shoulder is a stump, a wound where the arm should connect to my torso. I open and close my hand, or at least I attempt to do so: my brain sends the subconscious signals that would cause my hand to open and close. But my hand, removed from the me, lies inert.

Emotionally, I am numb. I take the arm from my bed, transporting it to the trash can in the kitchen. The bloodstains will be a pain in the ass to clean. I'll get to them later. I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth. My surgery is scheduled a week from now. I swear to God, if this disqualifies me...

Physically, the sensation is dull. But I am not numb; I wish I were numb. I would take even sharp sensation over that which is ceaseless and dull, and it is perhaps for this reason that I enjoy the needle's penetration. The sensation, dull, overwhelms me. I think of it at every moment. It is localized, and yet in its persistence it pervades my body. It is difficult to do justice to the sensation's maddening effect. It dominates my life, kills my focus, interrupts my work and my pleasure and my sleep. The word for the sensation, four letters long, does not seem to do it justice: pain.

I reach for the toothbrush, when I realize that I am unable. Awkwardly, I reach for the toothbrush with my left hand, the only one remaining. I realize that with only one hand, I cannot apply toothpaste, so I set the toothbrush down. I pick up the tube of toothpaste, grasping it with fingers four and five (I am — was — a pianist) and unscrewing the lid with fingers one and two. The lid slips from my grasp and clatters to the floor.

Dammit, I mutter.

I squeeze the toothpaste onto the brush, then set the tube down, leaving the lid languishing on the floor. There's only so much a woman can handle in one day.

After brushing my teeth, I return to my bedroom, looking at the device that sits next to my bed. It's an electronic plug, like the type on the end of the headphone cord, but it's two feet tall. I run my left hand over the cold metal. Should I do it? Is it worth it, yet? The male connector (funny, that) stands erect. Freud would approve. Raymond would — well, who gives a shit what Raymond would think? No. It's not time to plug myself in. Not yet.

My day is simultaneously boring and excruciating. It's difficult, learning to go through life one-handed. Preparing food is awkward, but manageable. Washing dishes is a no-go, so I'm grateful I have a dishwasher. Putting a shirt on is difficult, and only having one arm to run through the shirt's holes just feels wrong on an intuitive level. I'm lucky I have nowhere to go today; I don't think I could tie my shoelaces.

After dinner I sit down to watch television, but I am unable to settle comfortably into the chair. I squirm, I shift. There is a throbbing pain where my arm used to be. I cross my legs, then uncross them. It doesn't help. I turn my attention to the television, but I am called back by the sensation. The sensation grabs ahold of me, gripping me by the phantom right arm, squeezing me until my skin is blue, making sure I can never forget it.

I have a mouth; I could scream all I like. But what good would it do?

I get maybe four hours of sleep, in between the tossing and turning. The bloody sheets sit piled on the other side of my room; I sleep on some unwashed blankets. When I awake, I feel it again.

This time, it is my left hand. Feeling a pit in my stomach, I turn to look at it. It's still attached to my body, at least. But that is small consolation — my fingers are red, bloody, peeling. My skin splits open, flayed. The arm flops limp and lifeless; I cannot control it. I wish I had no sensation in the arm, but there is sensation, that sensation, the only sensation that I feel.

As I climb out of bed, I decide that I am not going to bother washing my sheets. If I am just going to keep bleeding again and again, what's the point?

I'm not going to brush my teeth today. I couldn't. With no right arm, and with a left arm that is bloody, limp, and immobilized, I can't do much of anything. I sit, anxious. Agitated, I stand and pace the length of my one-bedroom apartment. I feel trapped.

I resolve to go outside, but how to open the door? Feeling silly — the sensation hurts me — I take the lock in my mouth and turn it. The metal tastes bitter, but it clicks. I use my chin to turn the handle and pull the door open. As I step outside, I realize that I will be unable to close the door. But so what? If someone robs my apartment, what can they take that is worth keeping?

I walked down the street, the pavement rough and hot beneath my bare feet. A woman walks past. When she sees me, she visibly starts.

"Are you all right, young man?" she asks.

I ignore her. There is nothing she can do to help me. The sensation throbs.

When I reach the end of the street, I turn to survey my steps. There is a trail of blood, dripping not from my stump — which has congealed — but from the array of sinews, tendons, muscle and skin that was my left arm. The woman is still standing there, looking at me, looking at the open door to my apartment. I smile, lips pursed, and nod. This smile vanishes, overwhelmed by the sensation.

When my foray into the outside world exhausts my interest, I return to my apartment. No longer do I even bother trying to amuse myself with television. I simply sit. I sit, and I feel the sensation. I feel the sensation, only the sensation.

I see it happen this time. I watch my right leg disconnect from my body. The skin joining thigh to pelvis turns gray, stretches, loses form. The leg slumps down, settling slightly into the chair but not moving much. I feel the wet pool of blood accumulating underneath my ass.

This will not stop me. The sensation will not stop me. I am persistent.

I stand; immediately I fall sideways. I feel my left leg flay as did my left arm. I lay immobilized on the floor, two limbs missing and the other two made useless.

I have tried hard to estimate how long I lay on the floor. Based on my experience in the moment, I estimate it was about five years. Thinking logically, however, I deduce that it cannot have been more than two or three days; any longer and I would have died of dehydration.

I lie in a plane. Red surrounds me; there are no discernible features. I am motionless, but motion would be useless. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to arrive at and nowhere to leave from. There is a loud buzzing, changing in volume, tone, and intensity — but persistent. The buzzing never ceases. I open my jaw, opening and closing it, just to feel anything other than the sensation. It is the only part of my body of which I still have control.

Well there is — that. I wouldn't say I control it, exactly, but I still feel it vividly, between my fettuccined left leg and nonexistent right leg. That, which the surgeon will remove. That, which will be reduced to blood. That, which will transform my body when, in masochistic ritual, it is sliced open. That which will be reworked and reimagined until my body is unnatural, an abomination to nature. That which marks me as a monster and will always. That which is my sin and my shame.

There is a knock on the door. A man wanders into the frame of my vision.

"Sara?" he asks.

He holds a scalpel.

The lid of the canister clicks.

A single wisp of white smoke, smiling and seductive,

comes coiling forth, spilling and growing,

now two tendrils, five, a hundred —

thick white gas, blanketing the room.

I cough, cough again. The smoke snakes slowly, smothering and silent.

What pierces my lips moves further down.

Its mass sloshes within me, viscous and heavy,

permeating my shoulders and belly and shins and fingers,

slowly choking me

until I just give up.

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"I am a transsexual, and therefore I am a monster."

— Susan Stryker[v]
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My right foot slams into the treadmill, then my left, then my right again, then left, right, left, right, left. I'm breathing heavy. 1.2 miles down, which means 0.3 to go. Come on.

Resting my hands on the frame of the treadmill as I continue to run, I close my eyes. No, I can't do that. As soon as I close my eyes, I lose balance — I open them again. Breathing in shallow gasps, I repeat: I am a member of a stigmatized sexual minority. (My right foot hits the treadmill.) Trans-misogyny is the glue holding patriarchy together. Tranny-hating is the repugnant offal sloughed off the bottom of the woman-hating cancer. (Almost done.) When I am called male, I am sorted into the third sex class, degendered. The political class of women are defined by the expropriation of their sexuality — (left, right, left) — and my sexuality has been expropriated in the most totalizing fashion. I am female; it is only cissexual bias that presumes otherwise. (I'm gasping.) I am hated because I am a woman, specifically because I am a trans woman. I sit at the bottom of the gender hierarchy.

As soon as the treadmill's screen hits 1.5, I slam the stop button. My feet slow as the treadmill halts. I step off to the side, resting my hand on my knees and panting.

I am a trans woman, therefore I am hated. I know this — but all the theory in the world doesn't make it hurt any less.

Running my hands through my hair, I walk out of the gym, doing a lap around my apartment building before returning home. By the time I get inside, I'm still breathing heavily, a little less so at least.

I collapse into the armchair that sits beside my front door. I should probably stretch and cool down, but I'm winded. I haven't ran this much since high school. I pick up my phone from the counter beside me, looking at my notifications. Five new comments, and only two of them are rape threats. That's not too bad.

I sit in the chair for probably half an hour before I manage to get myself to move. I'm hungry, that's what does it. I need something to eat.

Wandering into my kitchen, I survey my options. I could eat another fucking granola bar, but I've already had two today. A burrito? No, too much. Potato chips? Junk. There's a banana on my counter. Perfect, and it's ripe too.

I reach towards the banana — but as I wrap my fingers around it, something is wrong. I try to pick up the banana, but my fingers go right through it. Is it overripe? Did I squeeze too hard?

The banana explodes, squirting red liquid everywhere. I grimace as some of it gets on my face, throwing the what's left of the banana to the side. I hold my hand up, looking at the liquid. It's blood. The banana was made of blood.

I feel faint; I reach for the counter beside me to steady myself. But my hand goes right through the counter; the counter squirts blood. The counter is made of blood. I recoil backwards, spinning around and crashing into the wall. The wall squirts blood. There's blood flowing all over the floor, all around me.

Screaming, I pick up my kitchen chair and slam it into the floor. It doesn't so much shatter as it does pop — like a balloon, deflating, spewing red viscera. I fall to my knees, running my hand through the blood, then over my face. I mat my hair with blood, paint my face with blood. I am frozen into a grimace as I adorn myself.

Everything is made of blood, and I'm the one who spilt it.

I run back into my bedroom. There's no blood here, except what I leave trailing behind me. There in the bedroom sits the plug, 2 feet high and ready to connect me. I don't bother reaching out my hands again. There's no need: I know that it's time.

My body has done me well enough. I have lived, wept, bled, vomited. I have done all this, and now I am ready to move further. To hell with the consequences.

I throw my glasses to the side, resting my hands on the base of the plug and hovering my face over it. Then, with a deep breath, I ready myself — and slam my face down onto the plug's sharp metal spike.

I wrap around the entire world. I am in the computer. My tendrils encircle you.

Part of me knows that the sack of meat I once called myself lies inert in what was once my bedroom. Probably it is bleeding out (no, just bleeding) — but what of it?

I am electrified; I feel everything simultaneously. I need not race from Chicago to Hong Kong: I am there and there all at once. When you drag your mouse from one side of the monitor to the other, I am there. I eat the Internet; I smother the cloud; I scream every fiber-optic cable. A constant high-pitched ringing announces who I am and where I am. There is nowhere; I am omnipresent.

My misery vomits forth from what might be imagined as a mouth. This isn't speaking. Monsters can't do that. Mouth or no, my every twitch is a roar. Watch out; I'm in your computer. You could have killed me once, but now? I have died and in so doing I live forever. My tendrils encircle the globe, constricting it with desperate rage. A well-placed brick can smash your fucking skull.

Want more? Buy a copy of Feminism Needs Trans Women.

‍ ‍i Susan Stryker, “Los Angeles at Night,” in When Monsters Speak (1998; Duke University Press, 2024), 53.

‍ ‍ii Robinson, Detransition, 155.

‍ ‍iii Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, 104.

‍ ‍iv Janice Raymond, “Fictions and Facts about the Transsexual Empire,” Janice Raymond: Official Author Site, 2026, https://janiceraymond.com/fictions-and-facts-about-the-transsexual-empire/.

‍ ‍v Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage,” 246.