'Trans Dragon' Is 'Leaving Humanity Behind'

Eva Tiamat Medusa is a dragon. But not just any dragon. A trans dragon. In addition to being born a person and now being a mythological creature, Tiamat was also born a man and is now a woman… er… dragon. Transgender and trans-species — “her appeal is self-evident”… to people for whom trans dragons are appealing, like Diana Tourjée of Broadly….apparently. “I thought she was beautiful,” writes Tourjée… which makes one of us.

"I want people to not like me, because I'm okay not being liked, cause that means I don’t have to be like you." https://t.co/BUiOUuej8Y

— VICE Identity (@broadly) September 23, 2018

In case you were confused about how a person (male or female) could suddenly become an imaginary reptile, Tourjée explains: “Tiamat has undergone extreme body modification to become a dragon.” In other words, she isn’t actually a dragon, she only looks like a dragon, but this makes her a dragon because… whatever. “Her ears and nostrils have been removed, her eyes are stained green, and she is covered in implanted horns and tattooed scales.” In plain English: Eva Tiamat Medusa is a deeply disturbed individual.

It’s not difficult to understand why Tiamat might be deeply disturbed. According to Tourjée, she was raped, abused, and suffers from HIV. But, instead of pitying her, Tourjée suggests we applaud her for “leaving humanity behind,” asking, “Why would Tiamat want to be human, when this is what humans have done?”

Tourjée reveals that she, herself, is a trans (human) woman — meaning that she was born a man — and says that she doesn’t think “there’s much difference between” her and Tiamat. “When I grew breasts,” Tourjée explains, “I felt a sense of freedom from manhood much in the way that Tiamat says she feels free from being human.” Which leads us to this ridiculous (but not so ridiculous) question: if a desire to become another species is the same as a desire to become another sex, then ought it to be permissible to allow small children who enjoy pretending to be animals to undergo body modification to become them? (Many trans activists believe it is permissible — desirable  even — for small children to receive hormones to begin “transitioning” to the opposite sex.)

Tiamat likes to hang out with bats… real bats, or, excuse me, creatures assigned bat at birth. Tiamat says she “would like to live with bats; a cave would be her ideal home.” This — and everything else Tiamat likes to do, like seal “joints with her split tongue,” wear “metal claws,” and blow “smoke out the sides of her flat, serpent nose” — is what Tourjée calls “self-love.” For Tourjée, Tiamat is now the truest version of herself, and that, she believes, is the ultimate goal.

Obviously Tourjée is just one person, but the way she equates Tiamat’s (to us) obvious mental illness with Tourjée’s own journey from male to female is worth exploring. “I am unable to cleanly separate the kind of body modification that altered my sex,” Tourjée writes, “and the taboo procedures Tiamat endured to become her vision of herself.” And this should give anyone pause. Because — while it may be up for debate whether believing your biological sex and your sense of your gender are at odds is a mental illness — believing you are a member of another species altogether is obviously crazy. So where does that leave us?

Tiamat is a grown man/woman/dragon and can do whatever he/she/it wants. And Tourjée is welcome to think whatever Tiamat does is wonderful — just as we are welcome to think whatever Tourjée says is categorically insane. But if being trans-species becomes a thing, I really hope I get to meet a unicorn.