Several times throughout the article Eli talks about how his body was stolen or taken from him. He mentions that he was raped several times by his father and that his mother stated she never knew. By addressing his sexual abuse and neglect, he connects this to his homosexuality and trans-gender identity.
However, one of the passages in the story makes me debate whether Clare really does attribute the abuse to him becoming a transgenders person.
“How did his gendered abuse reinforce my sense of not being a girl? How did his non-abusive treatment of me as an almost son interact with the ways in which fists and penis and knives told me in no uncertain terms that I was a girl? ... and later “How did my mother’s willful ignorance of the hurt he inflicted on me influence what I absorbed about femininity and masculinity?” (126)
Clare states that he does not know and will never be sure if the abuse or neglect he was exposed to in life caused him to be transgender or homosexual. (Shawn Parkhurst, 20)
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