Malleable Identities

On Oli London's 'Gender Madness'
X
Story Stream
recent articles

In our age, it has become a widely accepted truism that identity is self-determined. And yet, few have been willing to tread into the menacing waters of transracialism. While the gender transitions of Caitlyn Jenner and Elliot Paige are celebrated with praise for their courage, transracials like Rachel Dolezal and Raquel Evita Sarawati are publicly flagellated for the cardinal sin of cultural appropriation. In Gender Madness–part memoir, part tirade against trans ideology–Oli London takes on our society’s complicated relationship with “self ID.”

In the new tell all book, the British K-pop singer and media personality recounts his experience undergoing over 30 surgeries to become a Korean woman and then transition back to being a caucasian male. He begins by painting a vividly heart-wrenching picture of his childhood growing up on the secluded countryside outside of London, with a gruff, abusive father and sensitive mother. Disinterested in aggressive play, he took to his mum’s gentleness and compassion and made friends with female classmates. To avoid the horrendous cruelty of schoolyard bullies, he hid away in the classroom during playtime and buried his nose in his studies.

Suffering with intense feelings of self-hatred and body dysmorphia, he decided to seek out his greater purpose in life through humanitarian efforts. After working with an NGO in Ethiopia, he went off to South Korea to teach English. It was there that he had his first awakening, as he found himself enthralled by the richness and beauty of Korean culture: from the food and architecture to the warmness of the people and–above all–K-Pop music. Living in South Korea brought his soul to life in a way that his unremarkably bland British upbringing couldn’t manage to.

One thing led to another, and London released “Perfection,” his first K-Pop single in 2018. But soon after, he decided that making Korean music was not enough: the time had come for him to become Korean. He attributes his decision to get facial modification surgeries in order to embody more typical Korean phenotypes to his esteem for and envy of most male K-pop star’s confidence and glamor, as well as their comfort with embracing their feminine sides.

London expresses feeling shocked by the internet hate he received after publicly unveiling his new face. In his eyes, he was not a cultural appropriator. “I was just appreciating my favorite culture…Why,” he wonders, “didn’t people lovingly accept me like they do with everyone else in the alphabet self-ID community who has a different identity?...I thought Generation Z were all about love and self-acceptance, and I had searched my whole life to be accepted and feel valid, yet they had all turned on me. I was painted as a monster.”

His drive for validation was, unsurprisingly, not quelled by his racial transition. And despite being immersed in a culture that was more accepting of effeminate males than his native rural British culture, his persistent fear of not being “manly enough” gnawed away at his self-esteem…until finally, it dawned on him: “after all the surgeries to have the Korean aesthetic I realized that I had perhaps misplaced my identity and been searching for answers and fulfillment in the wrong places—that really, I was meant to be a trans woman.” He conceded that perhaps everyone “had been right and all my misfortunes and struggles were the result of being born in the wrong body. Being a trans woman was the only solution that made sense to me…”

Almost overnight, London went from being the mediascape’s favorite punching bag to its new it-girl. The internet showered him with praise for embracing his true self. But still, his ceaseless craving for affirmation remained very much intact. In a dark moment, he stumbled into a church and was struck by a Gospel reading about Jesus befriending outcast lepers, with whom he deeply identified. After several Bible study meetings, he discovered what he had been looking for all along: to be loved as he was, flaws and all, without having to change any aspect of his identity. His newfound faith inspired him to take up the call to defend the truth and speak up for the vulnerable. His book–especially the second half, dedicated to condemning child gender transitions–is in his eyes a response to said calling.

London’s story is disarmingly reminiscent of Camille Paglia’s 1994 essay “No Law in the Arena.” In it, the feminist provocateuse offers a “speculative scenario” in which “a sensitive boy” who is “shy and dreamy from the start” is alienated from his aggressive father and male family members. “But he is his mother’s special favorite, almost from the moment he is born.” Uncomfortable with rough play, “he is drawn to his mother’s and sisters’ quietness and delicacy.” More drawn to beauty and the arts, “he is fascinated by his mother's rituals of the boudoir, her hypnotic focus on the mirror as she applies magic unguents from vials of vivid color, like paints and palette.”

Paglia here makes a key distinction: the boy is attracted to his mother’s clothes and makeup not necessarily because he wishes he were a girl, but because her clothes “are made of gorgeous, sensuous fabrics, patterns, and hues denied men in this post-aristocratic age.” Paglia goes on throughout Vamps and Tramps (the collection in which “No Law in the Arena” appears) to laud the rich and imaginative aesthetic and spiritual landscape of Mediterranean, Afrodiasporic, East Asian, and Latin American cultures–which have spawned geniuses like Michelangelo and Da Vinci–and juxtaposes them with the drab cultural landscape of Anglo-Saxon and puritanical Protestant (better known as WASP) societies. In such cultures, men who created artistic masterpieces are celebrated for their accomplishments and contributions to society.

Paglia, and other “pro-ethnic” pundits like Michael Novak, lament the ways that Anglo cultures have propagated the globalization of “sanitized, uprooted, and disembodied” Enlightenment ideals. Said ideals have fomented a sensation of spiritual disenchantment and cultural deracination, leaving people confused as to how to construe their relationship with reality and their own identities–especially when it comes to gender and sexuality.

Reactionaries are quick to use the cognitive dissonance of pro-transgender progressives who condemn transracialism as a form of cultural appropriation as proof of the inconsistencies of moral relativism. Surely many conservatives will (and already have) praised London’s bold challenges to conventional identitarian discourse. But such un-nuanced readings of London’s book will miss out on what is most interesting about transition narratives—both gender and racial ones. London speaks of a collective sense of cultural “Alzheimer’s”—of a people who have lost sight of their roots–and thus cannot help but attempt to replant their roots in something new and (at least seemingly) more promising.

It goes without saying that Oli London is decidedly not a Korean woman. His gender dysphoria was transient, and his ethnic identity is incontrovertibly a caucasian Brit. But given his upbringing in the bowels of an atomized post-Enlightenment environs, London’s story adds up. Stifled by a drab aesthetic imagination–devoid of a strong sense of ethnic identity or a spiritual legacy–London was left without any meaningful cultural markers upon which to hang his identity.

Thus it shouldn’t be of any shock that boys like him–who are unmoored from their roots, disconnected from their bodies (in part due to mass automation and lack of access to meaningful labor), and who are drawn to seeking higher ideals of beauty, truth, and purpose–choose to disassociate themselves from social norms whose flatness they can’t help but see through and rebel against. In our disenchanted age, boys like him who ask questions and defy the status quo are painted not as courageous or intelligent, but as weak and “girly.”

Despite the untidy, repetitive narration of his memories and the harping on cliched culture war talking points in the book’s second half, London makes up for literary imprecision with his transparent and heartfelt sincerity…which even his worst naysayers will have to work hard to deny.

And to be clear, London’s polemic is not so much aimed toward adults with persistent dysphoria who—after pursuing counseling and sound medical advice—decide to transition. Rather, it’s aimed toward those pushing a dogmatic narrative onto young people who are struggling with self-esteem issues and still need the space to sort out who they truly are and what defines them as human beings. It’s worth noting London’s first encounter with a trans person in South Korea, whose fierce confidence and kindness he deeply respected.

Gender Madness is a convincing diatribe against dogmatism of either a progressive or conservative bent. London’s story reminds us of the importance of allowing young people the space to ask meaningful questions about who they are–not in isolation from others or in a self-enclosed manner, but in dialogue with their roots, and with the people and circumstances that have been “given” to them in life.

Stephen G. Adubato is a writer and professor of philosophy based in New York. He is also the curator of the Cracks in Postmodernity blog, podcast, and magazine. Follow him on Twitter @stephengadubato.