Disengendered

The mathematical visual poem titled “Disengendered” is a pencil drawing done around January 2020. While in Oklahoma, a state known for conservative views, I was inspired to make this piece during a discussion with an Oklahoma friend of mine who shared her experience with me about one of her close friends. For clarity, I will refer to her friend as “TJ”. My friend expressed that TJ was struggling with a gender transition. It was made known that TJ was born with both sets of genitalia and yet, was forced to grow up as a girl due to TJ's mother cutting off TJ's male genitalia while as a baby. When TJ became around thirty years old TJ was confused due to being convinced that TJ’s mother made a mistake and TJ is a man. Yet, TJ had all this experience as a girl and has female genitalia as well.

While viewing and trying to understand TJ from a distance one experiences this person as normal and well-adjusted yet, the closer one gets to TJ the more confused one gets concerning TJ’s gender struggle. This would not normally be a problem if not for also being empathetic to the pain and struggle that TJ is experiencing.

I have mapped this experience visually in my drawing, for at a distance, the drawing looks fine -- even to the point that you can tell TJ is wearing glasses. Yet, up close the drawing is confusing and hard to tell if it depicts a person at all. In this work, I was inspired to express my compassion for TJ in the struggle he is experiencing in his transition by creating visual and mathematical metaphors pointing to metamorphic hope.

The mathematical poetic form used is a "Similar Triangles Poem" and you can find tools to understand the mechanics of this form I have provided a link below that provides a deep analysis of how Similar Triangles Poem functions. A translation from mathematics to a lexical expression reveals the poem can be read as "The Lost Soul is to a Cosmic Nursery as Being On An Ocean Raft is to Times Square. (NYC) or it can be read as The Lost Soul is to Being On An Ocean Raft as the Cosmic Nursery is to Times Square.